


A Thousand Natural Shocks

by foreverdistracted



Category: British Actor RPF, The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Theatre, Drama, Humor, M/M, Romance, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 05:44:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1417261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverdistracted/pseuds/foreverdistracted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When corporate bullshit threatened his love of the stage, writer and Creative Director Graham McTavish walked away from all the comforts his former position afforded him. With no funds, a tiny stage, and a handful of actors hoping to find employ elsewhere, putting up an original play in time for a competition seemed like a lost cause.  </p><p>Finding the perfect man to play his male lead provided some relief, although it also brought an entirely new set of complications. Not the least of which was: how could he convince Richard to join him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jackson Theatre

Graham squinted against the explosion of bright and pastel colours that came into view after he walked past the dimly-lit entrance hall of the Jackson Theatre. Heavy, lustrous Italian silk draped the tall columns bordering the seating area; pale tapestries with gold, winding patterns decorated the walls; and six crystal chandeliers hung from steel and wooden braces criss-crossing below a mural-painted dome. It was a display worthy of popes and kings - or corporate investors and sponsors with bulging pockets and multiple bank accounts. Either way, it had everything to do with showing off, and nothing to do with what would be shown on that stage three months from now. 

_Tremor cordis...but not for joy. No, definitely_ not _for joy._ As much as Graham was fond of saying that he'd left this life behind, he did sort of miss the pretentious drama of it all. He refused to feel like he should have dressed up, however, and slid his hands into the pockets of his fraying tenner jacket while strolling into the auditorium. 

At least he hadn't popped in during a dress day. The actors were wearing bits of costumes and props, but they were distinguishing markers more than anything else. They also seemed to be taking five - the young company was milling around like lost puppies, and the old timers were just sitting in the audience seats and thumbing through their scripts with the collective interest of turtles on Xanax. Mark, predictably, was having a debate with his stage manager about something that Graham was sure could have waited until after rehearsal. It was a sickness, he was convinced, and one that often wasted far too much time.

After Mark had seated himself, he scooted into the chair right behind and tapped his old friend on the shoulder. The shrill, surprised yelp that elicited left half the cast muffling their giggles. "Mark," he said, grin wide and cheeky, "I see your talent for miscasting hasn't diminished yet. Can't say the same about your height."

"You bastard!" Mark whirled, the clipboard in his hand nearly falling to the floor. He couldn't seem to decide whether he was glad of or horrified with Graham's presence. After a moment and a few steadying breaths, he settled on the latter. "I'm _rehearsing_."

"No, you're not. Arguing with Jed whether or not the lighting 'needs more yellow' doesn't count."

"Go away!" Mark yelled, with frantic shooing hand gestures. A few snickers wafted from where the younger members of the company had congregated. 

The beatific smile Graham wore wasn't doing much for Mark's rising temper, either. "Can't. I need actors."

"Graham...!" Mark's right hand rubbed at his temple, as if trying to massage away a blooming headache. As much as he was enjoying poking his fellow director with a knotty old stick for nostalgic purposes, he really did seem a little more harassed than normal. "Sit down and shut up, or get out and come back when we're done!"

"Sitting down," Graham said, hands raised and leaning back into his (plush, soft, comfy, we-need-a-few-of-these-in-the-Walsh) chair. "Shutting up."

"You...you..." The clipboard was waved to and fro in the air, as if trying to fan the words he was having trouble blurting out. "You can't just pop in here whenever you're in trouble and need actors!"

"Yes, Mark."

"It's just not done!"

"I know, Mark."

"And it's illegal!"

"I am so sorry."

Mark glared at him for ten more seconds. He probably would have done so longer, if Graham hadn't placed a hand over his heart and said, with utter sincerity, "Silent as a herald of joy."

A reluctant smile and a light scoff later, Mark was again addressing the stage, his back towards Graham. After a barked order or two, some of the cast roused themselves and headed for their marks.

He was still trying to glean from Mark's tangled directions which play they were performing, when a sensual and feminine voice from behind immediately grabbed his attention. "Come over here, you old tiger."

Graham chuckled. "Cate." Behind him, about ten rows away, sat Catherine Blanchett, looking as if her day was just made when he rose from his seat to take the one beside hers. "Still lovely as ever. How's the Jackson treating you?"

Cate smiled as Graham kissed her cheek. "As well as can be expected. Took you long enough," she said, crossing her legs and seating herself more comfortably while he did the same. "You can't come in here after five years and not greet me first."

"How could I, when you're seated all the way back here." Graham rested his shoulders against the backrest, taking in the wider view of the stage from where they were sitting. For a rehearsal, there was an abject lack of actor's voices. Mark was arguing with someone again. "Which, I am guessing, is _not_ a good sign for how this play is going."

"Mm." Cate's eyes sparkled. "Can you tell which one it is?"

"Shakespeare?"

She gave a light snort. "Of course. It's Mark, and this is still the Jackson. But which one?"

He could feel Cate's eyes observing him with that familiar, playful glint as he tried to put the pieces together from what he could see on stage. _The Tempest_...? No, the blocking wouldn't fit into any scene. Perhaps _Midsummer_...?

Then the towering young man with ginger hair spoke a line, and Graham's eyes widened. Cate's lightly muffled chuckle filled his ear. 

" _Mackers_?" he fearfully ventured. She nodded, her expression an interesting mix of amusement and heartfelt suffering. "That's...but..." he looked back at the stage and peered at one of the extras standing off to the right, the one wearing a green, frilly mess of vegetation over one shoulder, "Is that..."

"Seaweed," Cate said, finishing his thought.

"Are they...?"

"Yes."

He exhaled loudly. "Good lord."

"Not Mark's fault, there's that at least. Peregrine Clear promised to double their sponsorship if one of the productions is set underwater this season."

"I'm almost scared to ask," he paused as they both watched three figures - the witches, Graham guessed - mimick _swimming_ into view, "but before the administrative tyrants stepped in, where did Mark plan to set it, initially?"

"Dystopian South Ireland." Cate waited politely until Graham's uncontrollable snickering had died down. "It actually wasn't as terrible as it sounds, from what I saw of the maquette. Certainly better than _this_."

"God..." Graham wiped away the moisture building in his eyes. His side was actually beginning to hurt - he hadn't laughed this hard in ages. "I should remember to drop by more often whenever I regret leaving this place."

"Oh, Graham. You can't tell me you haven't missed this." She braced her elbow on their shared armrest and rested her chin on her cupped hand, blue eyes riddled with mischief and affection. "The amount of hallucinogenic insanity that occurs every single day within these walls puts acid to shame."

"I've missed _you_." Graham wore his most winning smile. "How many times will I have to woo you before you grace one of my plays?"

"I can't 'grace' something that's never seen completion. Really, you must work on that. I'm starting to think you have a problem."

"I finished one!"

Cate laughed. "That was Hugo's, and you only directed one act. Besides, you only did it so that Hugo would keep letting you use the Walsh."

"You know about that, do you?" It really shouldn't surprise Graham anymore, how well-informed Cate was. The veneer of disinterest she often wore was far too convincing. He smiled, letting a bit of pride shine through his expression. "I have a good feeling about this next one. We're going to try for the Boyens this year."

The Boyens National Theatre Competition, specifically, and whose winning play would become the flagship production for the festival afterwards. Huge venue, aggressive advertising, front page publication features, and all the funding one bootstrapped writer-slash-director could ever ask for.

Most importantly, however: complete creative control. Freedom from all the administrative shackles that nearly corroded Graham's passion for the stage and all its wonders five years ago.

 _Two years of bliss_. At his age, and considering all the things he'd gone through, he didn't think that was too much to ask for, really. 

He felt a tiny excited flutter when he caught a glimmer of interest in Cate's eyes. "That sounds serious," she said, her voice losing a bit of its playful drawl. "You'll be up against some heavy competition."

"'Heavy'? Challenging, maybe. The only threat I heard of is Wood & Bloom, and I've worked with _those_ two." His frown deepened, a sudden thought making his eyes widen. "Wait, Mark isn't joining, is he?"

The look Cate gave him made him feel like he'd just said the stupidest thing he could have under the circumstances. "No time to work on anything original. Everyone's busy for the season." Her gaze drifted briefly towards poor Mark, who was slouched in his seat and looking incredibly unhappy with everything he was seeing onstage, while wearing the defeated air of someone who was powerless to change anything. "Funny, really, for a place that's lost any shred of ambition."

A little unfair, perhaps, but Graham couldn't begrudge Cate her jaded view of Mark and his abilities. Her experiences with him had been restricted to what she saw in the Jackson Theatre, and by the time she joined the company, Mark was already heading down the trap-infested cesspool of corporate-sponsored stage productions. 

Graham, however, still remembered the brilliant, bright-eyed shortie with the big pipes who used to tail him in LAMDA, nattering about an exciting new piece of theatre he'd just read, or the edgy set design he planned on building once he had enough prestige and money. 

Lots of money _now_ , of course. Still no prestige to speak of. 

Then again, Graham had neither.

So, Mark's out - there was a bit of sadness colouring that thought, but considering what he knew of the man from their school days, however long ago that was, he'd really rather not compete against him. "I know Christopher Lee's company backed out when he retired...and Holmes is doing a reprise of last year's play for who knows what reason -"

"McKellen's joining," Cate said, seeming to have tired of his guessing.

Graham narrowed his eyes. Cate was often sweet, but she had a caustic streak in her humour sometimes (thanks in part to her place of employ), and her expression wasn't giving anything away. "You're shitting me."

"I shit you not. It was announced yesterday."

"You're _shitting_ me."

"MCTAVISH!"

Graham winced and waved his hand in a placating manner. "Sorry!" he yelled across the empty seats. Mark's glare bore the pent-up frustrations from all the things that didn't involve Graham directly, and he'd rather not bear the brunt of it now. "Shutting up."

Cate just raised her eyebrow, simply daring Mark to reprimand her.

Graham drew closer once Mark's attention had left them both. "McKellen, as in _Ian_ McKellen?" he whispered. " _Two_ musicals on Broadway, a third production in Berlin, mansion the size of a small palace... _that_ McKellen?"

Cate nodded, watching him with a hooded expression.

"But _why_?" The very thought was insane - like allowing a Grandmaster to compete with amateurs. "He doesn't need either the venue _or_ the prize money. And God forbid that someone who has two musicals on Broadway would need an off-Broadway run..."

"Prestige, probably," Cate suggested with a one-shouldered shrug, "or vying for legitimacy. It's his first venture into non-musical theatre."

 _Bully for everyone else, then._ The competition was notorious for its loose rules with regard to who could join - the catch was that it had very high standards. There had been no winner two years prior, because the judges deemed the quality of the entries severely lacking. 

There _had_ been second and third placers, though. Which, considering the circumstances, were more positions of shame than anything else.

He released a heavy sigh. "This certainly makes things more depressing."

"And here I was, admiring your sense of competition."

"It's still there. Just took a swift boot to the nuts, but still there." It wouldn't be a problem, if only the people running the Boyens Theatre would just tighten their participant rules. Although, there was a danger Graham would get swept with the same broom if that happened - it wasn't as if he hadn't had his glory days in the Jackson Theatre, either.

"This play of yours," Cate said, gently interrupting his musing. "Tell me about it."

"Well!" Graham began, lacing his hands and straightening in his chair. "It has characters. And dialogue. And the odd scene change or two -"

"Graham."

"- and if you want to find out the rest, then you'll have to join up." 

"You can't even tell me what it's about?" she asked, an eyebrow raised.

"I've been working on this thing for two years. You can't blame me for being a little protective."

"That's not much." Cate dismissively waved a hand, though the smile she wore gentled her words. "Walcott worked on 'Monkey Mountain' for ten."

"By those standards, I've been working on this one for...five." His voice fell flat on the last word. She laughed. "Oh, just try telling me that's not a long time."

Cate laughed harder. "I wouldn't dare." 

They both waved their apologies at Mark, who was, once again, glaring at them from the director's chair. 

 

Mark's office was pristine - which was a good indicator that he didn't use it much. The man was a work slob, notes everywhere, half-drunk cups of coffee on surfaces that shouldn't be holding them, boxes upon boxes of notepads filled with unfinished thoughts and sketches. He liked to keep all the creative chaos in a confined space so that he didn't take it home to his family.

That had been more than five years ago, however. Maybe he brought his work home with him now, to the apartment he rented a town away from where his ex-wife lived. 

"Rum?" Mark offered upon his entry. 

Graham waved away the bottle and took the seat in front of the desk. "Too early for me. You go ahead, though. You look like you need it."

" _Never_ too early for rum in this place." Mark poured himself a glass. "Also, I'm not letting you talk to the actors. Not after last time."

"That's a little unfriendly," Graham said with a frown. "It's not like I'm lassoing them to the back of my car. I just want to talk to them for a bit."

Mark had been about to take a sip from his glass, but upon hearing Graham's words, he swished his hand about, gesturing in the general direction of the auditorium and spilling drops of rum onto his desk. "Yes! And that's how the poaching starts!"

"'Poaching'?" He gave an incredulous laugh. "How is it poaching when I have your permission?!"

Glass still held high, Mark braced his elbow on the table, his forefinger pointed at Graham's face. "I'll tell you how: three years ago, I had a perfectly good cast for a Winter's Tale -"

Graham rolled his eyes. "This again. Your Perdita looked older than your Leontes and Hermione, by the way..."

"- and then all of a sudden, I was missing four main characters with the Administrative Director breathing down my neck about breaches of contract, and only two weeks left to rehearsal!" He drew away from the edge of the table, the little pout his mouth formed deepening the grooves in his face. "That was a right mess you left my play in. Warner will have my hide if it ever happens again."

Graham snorted. "You recovered well enough, didn't you? Leontes had, what...two understudies? The play was never in trouble."

"And now, you want to do it again!"

"Will you calm down!" He waited until Mark was settled back into his chair, sulking while drinking from his glass. "I have no set, no sponsors, no budget! If anyone's going to come with me, it's because they wanted to leave here in the first place. Don't think I didn't notice that you had _twice_ the number of people in that theatre than what's needed for a Mackers production. I'm sure you can spare one or two." 

"You do know that we have four drama schools in the region, and a long line of actors willing to work for pennies?" Marked snorted when Graham shrugged in response. "I don't know why you keep bothering me for stuff like this."

"Shorter walk from the Walsh," he said, with as innocent a smile as he could muster. One of the things Graham had admired about Mark back in school (not that he would ever say so in the man's presence) was his unexplainable knack for recognising and picking up those with impressive theatre chops. He'd first caught a glimpse of it during their finals, when he, Mark and Jed grouped together to stage a modern and very loose adaptation of Shaffer's _Amadeus_. By all accounts, it should have been a ridiculous mess - the suspension of disbelief was already stretched far too thin on the written page, what more performed in front of a live audience with a budget-challenged set, and no remarkable costumes to speak of. But the array of talent Mark had gathered was the piece that somehow glued all the others together and made their shortcomings disappear.

The problem was, left to his own devices, Mark was like a magpie that recognised shiny things without really knowing what to do with them. That, coupled with an insane budget, often led to a very bloated company of actors who were playing parts they probably shouldn't, and taking direction that was better suited for someone else.

"One or two, you said?" Mark asked. There was that hesitant quality to his voice that let Graham know he'd already capitulated, but wanted to dig his heels in some.

"One, two..." Graham rocked his right palm. "Maybe seven."

" _Two_!" Mark exclaimed, with a pointed glare. "And _only_ the extras or the understudies. And no hounding them if they say 'no'! What do you need them for, anyway?"

He repeated what he'd said to Cate earlier. Mark's reaction was a little less interested and a little more cynical. "Bit too old, aren't you, to be getting into things like that? Though I guess McKellen joining makes it more interesting."

"Spoken like a true cash cow. There _was_ a time when you would have jumped at events like this. I can't believe I actually miss those years, what with you clinging to my arm and crying all over my shirt about how beautiful something or other is, and how envious you are, and how we can do so much better..."

Mark pouted at him. "It's hard work, you know, catering to the demands of sponsors, while keeping the play just two inches shy of 'laughable.' 

"Besides," he tipped his glass towards Graham in a mock-salute, "you're dreaming enough for the both of us."


	2. Armitage

"Who's that, then?"

Mark followed the direction Graham had tilted his chin at. "That one?" Graham rolled his eyes when he began rummaging through his notes. "That's...oh, there it is. Armitage. The Porter, and Macduff's understudy."

" _Macduff_?" Graham asked, an eyebrow raised. "Would have thought Macbeth."

"No, that's Davis over there." Mark waved his hand towards a squat man with a ruddy beard who had been reciting Lennox's lines earlier. He looked back at Graham faster than the latter could school his expression. "And you can keep your bloody thoughts to yourself!"

"I don't know why sponsors keep giving money to this festival, with the way you miscast everything."

It was always great fun, seeing Mark get red in the face. "If all you're going to do is backseat drive while you're here -"

"Oh, don't get your knickers in a twist." Graham hid his smile behind his raised coffee mug. "Carry on. You were saying about Act III?"

Good to know Mark was still just as easily distracted. A few minutes into his rambling, and Graham's eyes were drifting once more towards the tall, quiet man with the worn notebook and the serious face. 

Graham wasn't sure when he started noticing him, but once he did, it was a battle to notice anyone else. It wasn't that his appearance was unusual or any more attractive than the rest of the cast - he looked practically bland beside Pierre, for example. And Lizbeth. Really, it almost seemed as if this Mackers cast was a gallery of Hollywood faces. And rehearsals...good God. He was sorely tempted to think that Mark had lost his touch, if the latter hadn't bemoaned how at least a fourth of the company was a major sponsor's relative, often a niece or son with dreams of grandeur and in danger of not getting into their university of choice. Most of them seemed to have been cast in this particular play. Some did try, Graham granted them that. But a good portion were apathetic to line endings and metrical rhythm. 

_This one, though..._ As he watched, Armitage folded his legs and squeezed himself farther back into his chair to make room for a fellow actor passing by. 

_Macduff._ Graham snorted into his hand. It wasn't that unsuited a role, he'd have to admit, but Armitage was large, had a compelling voice, and could never vanish into the background unless he was sitting down and you piled a lot of people right in front of him. He drew the eye, that one. Even when he was just standing still.

And really, a Porter?

 _Not your play, Graham._ He sighed and kept his mouth shut while Mark called for Pierre and Davis to take centre stage. Fifteen minutes in, Graham was yawning. Off to the side, Armitage scribbled in his notebook.

 

His breath was _misting._ Graham watched as his annoyed huff turned into a stream of white smoke in front of his face. It had been quite a long while since he'd been awake this early in the morning, and the closest he'd come recently was several months ago, when Hugo had wanted the Walsh to look busy during a scheduled health and safety inspection. That had been 8 a.m.

Some part of him _did_ miss this - waking up at arse o'clock for a good jog when he was younger and kept an iron grip on his physique. Before he decided, for some massively rubbish reason, that it was a good idea to try writing professionally.

 _6-bloody-a.m._ At least the dawn had been quite a sight. He spent the past hour grumbling his way through his ablutions and plodding through the morning chill, all the while convincing himself that some things were still worth waking up this early for. Hopefully, Armitage would be one of them. 

His guest pass briefly confused the security guard, but the prospect of having to call one of the administrators for confirmation so early in the morning was so unappealing, that he just shrugged and let Graham past the gate. The worn notebook he made sure _not_ to forget this time was tucked deep inside his jacket. He'd meant to return it the day before, but had unintentionally left it at his house and figured he could just return it later...only to be plagued with guilt throughout the day once he saw Armitage coming to rehearsal looking sleepless and worried. The poor man asked everyone if he or she had seen his notebook, and searched through all the rooms actors were allowed into whenever Mark called for five minutes.

He hadn't even meant to keep it overnight. Two days prior, Graham had come in late in the afternoon, and - uncaring of where he sat - dumped himself beside a seat that held a shoulder bag and a Belstaff jacket. Mark was nowhere to be found, and the actors were scattered across the stage, doing a line reading of Act I. 

It had felt like the notebook was taunting him, peeking as it was through the half-zipped opening of the bag and from beneath a limp, leather sleeve. He'd flipped to a random page, found a few entertaining notes about drunken behaviour, and before he knew it, he was ten pages in, chuckling through a waggish commentary about the Scottish way of solving political cock-ups.

Later, Mark had spotted him and called him over. It only occurred to him that he'd committed a misdemeanour during the drive back home, when an itch on his back made him notice the rolled up notebook jammed into the hem of his jeans, underneath his jacket.

He was reluctant to return it, truth be told. He hadn't finished reading it yet, what with the notebook nearly full of Armitage's handwriting and various printouts and clippings. If his notes were anything to go by, the actor was as bored with the role of Porter as a five-year-old was with a game of golf (comparatively speaking...there were still a few pages' musing on the Porter's life prior to the play's timeline). His notes on Macduff, however, spanned pages upon pages, with some branching notes about his relationship with Macbeth, and an elaborate backstory on his murdered family. There were only five unmolested leaves left. The last page had a charming little stick figure doodle of Macbeth's death scene (to which, unable to help himself, he'd added a couple of blood drippings in red ink).

But he wasn't sure he could stand another day of watching the distraught actor go from seat to seat, person to person. A quick look at the timetable on Mark's desk showed that Armitage often arrived very early (5 a.m. once last week, which was just obscene) and left at regular hours.

Luckily, Armitage was already there when he entered the theatre. On his hands and knees, looking underneath the audience seats.

As nice a view as that was (penny-bouncing activities came to mind), Graham audibly cleared his throat to let the other man know he was no longer alone. The poor thing banged his head in his rush to get up. "Armitage, right?" Graham asked while walking down the length of the middle aisle, wincing in sympathy as their eyes met. 

The younger man nodded, his gaze both wary and curious. "I prefer Richard," he said. "Good morning."

"Richard." Up close, Richard's eyes were a startling, expressive blue. Odd, that he hadn't noticed before. "You dropped this, I think..."

"Thank you." The deep, placid voice was at odds with the pure relief evident on Richard's face. He hastily thumbed through the worn pages, perhaps to make sure that a clipping or two hadn't fallen off, or that a leaf hadn't been ripped. A hint of tension entered his tone when he asked, "Did you read it?"

"Would it bother you if I did?" Graham asked, curious. 

"It's not really meant to be read by anyone else..."

"Skimmed a few pages, 'til I could figure out who owns it," he said. The stiff shoulders relaxed a fraction. There _had_ been a couple of phrases that made Graham's eyebrows rise, but the majority of the contents struck him as fairly safe. Mostly character notes that had references to Richard's own family life and analogies with past friendships and relationships. Still, nothing too damaging. Though Graham felt he was walking around a minefield, with the closed-off manner Richard was now regarding him. He gave a careless shrug, hoping it appeared casual enough. "Some pretty good notes in there. Have you told Mark?"

" _Mr. Hadlow_?" Richard asked, incredulous. "I enjoy having a job, so, no." 

"Pity. The lighting adjustment for Macduff during the battle scene might actually make that part watchable." His teasing smile had no visible effect. Perhaps he shouldn't have reminded him that he'd been thumbing through his private thoughts just hours ago. "Don't think we've been introduced," he quickly said to dissipate the tension. "I'm -"

"Graham McTavish, yes. You're very well-known here." 

That didn't sound like a precursor to good news. The quality of information Richard might have gathered depended extremely on which people he'd been talking to. If he was lucky, it was mostly Cate. "Just a note," he said, carefully watching the other man's face, "most of the people in this place won't have flattering things to say about me." 

Richard smiled, looking as if he knew exactly the sort of talk Graham was alluding to. "Saw your R and J a few years ago in London," he said instead, polite and holding back amusement. 

"Don't hold it against me."

"No, I loved it." He gave a small laugh. "I thought the critics were unfairly harsh."

"Comes from not having enough money to send them home with gift baskets at opening." The memory of it still stung, actually. Some of the reviews focused more on the little scandal caused by his Romeo apparently having four other Juliets in real life, should we say, who hadn't been aware of each other's existence prior to the play's opening. "You know why I'm here?"

Richard gave a cautious nod. "Somewhat." Graham figured as much. Mark would have warned the entire cast by now that he was on the prowl for the passionate and the discontent. "I don't know why you're talking to me, though."

"Who do you think I should I be talking to?" 

"The younger cast. Evangeline, maybe." At Graham's blank expression, he continued, "Lady M's understudy? Brunette, laughs a lot..."

Graham made a mental note to seek her out later. "None of them have impressed me yet. Well...one or two, maybe. But not like you."

"Me?" Richard asked, with a puzzled frown. "I've just been showing up for rehearsal this past week."

"Oh, come on. You did a line reading three days ago. I don't know when Mark stopped caring about the verse, but if I'd known you were going to deliver your lines like that, I would have run back home to get my camera." 

Graham would have missed the faint blush if he hadn't been watching so intently. Richard scratched the bridge of his nose. "That's kind of you to say...and this is all very flattering, but I should mention right now that I can't afford to leave even if I wanted to. Rent's up in a couple of days, and my nephew's in the hospital..."

Graham made an unhappy noise at the back of his throat. "I see Mark already mentioned that I won't be able to pay."

"First thing he said, actually." 

There was something infectious about the way Richard laughed - hesitant, low, and a little shy. Graham found himself smiling through his disappointment. 

 

Evangeline Lilly was a little hyperactive ball of enthusiasm. More importantly, she didn't mind the no-salary part. "Sounds like fun! I'm in," were her exact words. Graham didn't even have to tell her what his play was about. Later in the week, he was surprised to find out that she and Richard shared a flat, along with two other actors. He wondered just what Richard had told her about their encounter.

Nothing bad, judging from how she latched on to the idea of leaving a well-paying job. Or perhaps she recognised what the Jackson Theatre did to one's love of the stage and decided to bail while she could. Either way, he wouldn't be returning empty-handed. A quick phone call to Lee, and his equally thrilled co-director congratulated him, requested that he convey his greetings to Mark, and asked him when he was returning to the Walsh.

"Not just yet," he found himself answering. _Thou scarlet sin._ Since Richard's refusal, he'd tried to observe the other background actors and mentally jotted down the name of two potential snags. He wasn't too keen on getting them, but it couldn't hurt to try. They really were rather short-staffed, and their back-up plan of asking Dean's buddies from the indie scene if they ever got desperate enough might not pan out.

Mark was content to let him attend rehearsals so long as he let him have his ear on occasion and mostly kept out of the way. As luck would have it, Act 2, Scene 3 was on the plate today, and Richard took centre stage.

The role truly couldn't be anything but comical, and there was that unavoidable discomfort in seeing a man of Richard's height and stature weave drunkenly about while conversing with an imagined audience. Graham had had his doubts, but the younger man didn't shy away from any of the idiosyncrasies that made the Porter's segment memorable. He went for the wild gestures and the funny voices, but what Graham noticed and honed in on was the distinct cadence to his delivery that almost made the whole thing sort of classy. 

He chuckled a bit when the Porter began addressing Pierre, the actor playing Macduff. Mark's grumbling little voice distracted him from his observation. "...I suppose he _is_ rather good." 

Graham snorted into his hand. "Don't break anything, trying to admit that."

"No one likes a gloater, Graham." 

He wasn't exactly sure what had happened, conversing as he was with Mark - but the next moment, there were voices raised on stage, and then Pierre was shedding his props and storming off. _Exeunt_ , stage right.

"Fifteen, everyone," Jed's weary voice called from the stage manager's booth overhead.

 _Not an unexpected occurrence, then._ Graham had had his share of handling prima donnas, and it was one of the reasons he had desperately wanted to leave the Jackson. He still suffered the occasional one or two at the Walsh, but he heightened his tolerance for them only if they had the goods to back it up. Pierre certainly _looked_ the part, but Graham pegged him as mediocre at best. Certainly not good enough to be throwing a fit and getting away with it if he'd been under Graham's management. (Fortunately not a scenario that would ever come to pass, what with Graham being broke, and Pierre looking bloody expensive.)

"Board director's son?" he ventured. 

Mark released a deep sigh. "Board director's husband." A pair of large, hopeful eyes appeared in Graham's line of sight. "Do me a favour and take him off my hands?"

"Aww. You're funny." He chuckled and patted Mark on the shoulder. "Go have a drink."

Later, a long text on his phone reminded him to please ask Mark for any spare prop materials lying around, or Tami was going to start using the mud outside and some spit to make his next maquette.

Graham was tempted to ignore the text just to see what that would look like, but Tami had a bit of a temper and he'd rather not lose his _only_ Props Manager-slash-Costumer-slash-Make-up Artist-slash-drinking buddy. It was something of a bonus that she was also quite good, and that she owed him a big favour. Something many of their current staff shared, actually. He'd been rather good at keeping track of the people he'd helped throughout his life.

 _Screw asking._ He knew where they kept the silicone and resin tubs in the Jackson. Memories of entire buckets of them being binned due to disuse were still fairly clear, and he doubted Mark would miss two or three (or ten) of the things.

While on his way to the Jackson's sizable storage area, he heard voices as he was passing through a series of multi-purpose conference rooms. He slowed his pace, then paused just a foot shy of stepping past the open door he guessed was housing the talking pair. 

"...dunno why you bother, though," a gruff voice said, which Graham recognised as belonging to Mana Davis. "Pierre said he'll quit if any of his understudies ever took his place." 

"I like keeping sharp." That was undeniably Richard. "So, is this all right...? Evie usually does this with me, but..."

"Yeah, heard she left for McTavish's thing. Go ahead."

What followed was a smooth line run, not between Lennox and the Porter, which were their respective roles, but between Malcolm and Macduff. Richard began with "Boundless intemperance!" and Graham found himself swept up in the rich timbre of his voice, the deep resonance that conveyed emotion as easily as it did history and context. This was the Macduff that bore all the pain, righteous indignation, and innate optimism that was bursting from the pages of that ratty old notebook he'd returned just a few days ago. 

Davis's responses were but small breaks, seconds counted down to when Richard spoke again. With that low voice a pleasant thrum in his ears, Graham's thoughts wandered to his own script, mentally going over the various characters in his head. This voice, with Edward's monologue...or this distinctly noble quality with Matheson's indignant tantrum midway, perhaps...

_What about Westmore?_

He frowned, blocking out Armitage's voice for a moment while he focused on that thought. He already _had_ a Westmore, and a pretty brilliant one - Lee had agreed to read for him until they could find a permanent actor, but things had gone on for so long that they'd been calling on him to fill in for what few scenes they could rehearse. Lee hadn't been completely opposed to the idea, but in private, he'd let Graham know that if it were a choice, he would much rather remain the Associate Artistic Director and Stage Manager than become a name on the playbill.

_Westmore._

He carefully glanced around the doorframe, enough to see Richard's long form seated on the surface of a table, one leg up, the other dangling above the ground. Westmore had initially been a mousey-looking man in his head, as gentle and soft-looking as his nature, drawing direct parallels between his physical appearance and the frailty of his self-confidence. Nothing like Richard at first glance.

Richard at first glance, who was Macbeth; and at second glance, Macduff. At third...

 _Yes, that's right,_ Graham thought, his eyes on Richard's bowed head, watching the way those long lashes dipped while he studiously read through the script in his hand, the slight wince his lips formed when he inadvertently botched the timing of a passage, _I'd give you Westmore._

 

"This is..." Richard gestured vaguely at the two-inch manuscript he held. It didn't even have a title yet, and two scenes needed to be fleshed out (one was a single page with the words "[PROSE GOES HERE ASAP]"). But Richard had quietly devoured the first Act in record time, and reacted pretty much like Lee had when he'd been presented with the first draft.

There were only a handful of people who had ever been shown that script. It was a risk, but Graham couldn't afford to be precious about it. Not if he wanted good people to invest their time and skills in his unprofitable little venture.

He let a smug smile curve his lips at Richard's baffled expression. "It's not finished, but I've been told it's rather good."

Richard flipped through the unfinished pages and read the first few lines of Act 2, Scene 5. His voice, when he spoke, sounded interested though hesitant. It gave Graham hope. "And you think there's a part in here for me?"

"How do you feel about Westmore?"

The expression that little suggestion caused wasn't what Graham was expecting. Richard's eyes had widened in surprise, but when he raised them to meet Graham's, they'd been hooded. Guarded. It was a tense few seconds before, slowly, they turned into suspicion. "You're that desperate for actors, then?"

 _So much for expecting flattery._ It was the voice more than his eyes, this time. There was an edge of hurt hiding in there, and a loaded question that Graham didn't fully recognise yet, one that, perhaps, spoke of past experiences that went awry.

 _Actors,_ Graham thought with a disdainful snort. Thank God he'd stuck to writing. "I'm being serious," he said, squarely meeting Richard's wary gaze. "Westmore. Yours. If you want it."

"If I want it," Richard repeated, while releasing a wry laugh. He broke their gaze and fixed his eyes downwards, the thick fringe of his lashes catching a bit of the afternoon sun's light. "And then a high profile actor appears two weeks into rehearsal, and the playbill changes -"

"No," Graham interrupted with a firm voice. "That won't happen. That's not how I work - I have enough people who can vouch for me if you have any doubts." He watched the conflicting emotions on Richard's face - there was desire there, behind a great, big wall of reluctance. His eyes were skimming the page again, the one with the list of characters and Westmore's name right at the very top. "Is it only the money holding you back?"

That earned another dry laugh. "'Only' the money." A moment later, Richard flipped back the cover page and returned it to Graham. "I would have jumped at something like this ten, maybe twenty years ago," he said, wistful. "And it's not the role, not really. I'm not sure I agree that I fit Westmore. It'd be nice, to be part of something that brings a story like _this_ to life." The smile he gave Graham was both self-deprecating and regretful. "But I'm not in my twenties anymore." 

"Neither am I," Graham said with an easy smile. "We're both past our dancing days, aren't we? But what better time to start taking risks?"

"Maybe when I know I'll have something to eat even if I don't get my next paycheck." He stood and slung the strap of his bag over one shoulder. "Won't be today for me."

 _Well_ , Graham thought as Richard headed for the door, _I tried._ He was going to try again tomorrow, but Richard didn't have to know that. The manuscript pages were in disarray, and he bent down to stack it more evenly on a levelled surface. 

"Thank you, though." He looked up to see Richard still hovering beyond the doorframe, holding himself a bit stiffer than usual. As if he knew that talking to Graham further wasn't a smart move. (It wasn't, Graham would have to agree.) "For what you said earlier."

He frowned and tried to think back to anything special he might have said. "Which part?"

Richard shrugged. "All of it."


	3. Chapter 3

The next few days saw Graham waking up at 5:30 a.m. just so he could be at the Jackson by 6:00 (give or take...he usually woke up later than he meant to and arrived just thirty minutes before rehearsal, but who was keeping track, really), where Richard would be waiting without fail, armed with a cardigan, a pen, and his trusty notebook. He'd avoided the topic of his play at first, unwilling to bring it up while Richard still greeted him with that guarded, polite smile. The notebook also remained closed while he was in proximity. 

They didn't lack in conversation, however. The man was wonderfully well-read, made apparent when their discussions would sometimes branch off into the works of authors like Bulgakov, Ludlum, along with a number of biographies Graham was surprised anyone else apart from himself bothered to read. Industry-related matters were often relegated to more abstract concepts, though he'd entertained himself with watching the other man squirm whenever he'd casually throw in a criticism or two about Mark's creative vision (or lack thereof), just to see Richard try and deflect the conversation to safer ground - at first. Eventually, Graham got him to say out loud some of the things he'd written in his notebook, thoughts that Graham had found interesting and had been itching to bring up, but was afraid to in case that caused the actor to withdraw from him again.

Perhaps that should have been his first clue that he was getting a little too invested in this man's affairs. 

Five days in, and his play once again became the subject of conversation, but not through his own means. After a companionable silence, Richard asked (with some forced casualness that made Graham smile): "Why Westmore?"

"Why not?" Graham asked in turn. 

"I don't exactly look the part, do I?"

"That shouldn't matter. Not up _there_." He tilted his chin towards the empty stage. "This is where Mark and I differ the most, I guess. I abhor pageantry."

Richard didn't seem to know what to say to that. Graham asked, his eyes narrowed in thought, "If not Westmore, who among the other characters do you see yourself playing?"

"I'm not sure. Bishop, maybe." A moment later, he said, after an uncomfortable twitch of his shoulder, "Probably Rippler, if I'm feeling adventurous."

Graham made a noncommittal noise in his throat. Bishop was a minor character and had seventeen, twenty lines at best. It was a modest, bullshit answer, so he mentally dismissed it. Alex Rippler, however, was Westmore's counterpoint. He was aggressive where Westmore was calm, spirited where Westmore was reticent. Graham hadn't been too fixated on what Rippler's overall physical appearance should be, but it was the sort of role that drew in actors hoping to play the dashing young man in a romance or a grand adventure. A rather predictable answer, Graham thought, and one that he was disappointed to hear. 

"I can hear you thinking my answer's shit."

Graham disguised his surprise behind a strategic cough. "You said it, not me. But, now that you mention it..."

"I just work better when the character I'm playing is leagues apart from myself."

"Better, or more comfortable?" 

Richard gave an uneasy laugh. "Can't it be both?" 

"Depends who you ask. I don't think those two words should go together."

The look Richard gave him was a fascinating balance between amusement and annoyance. "You have pretty high standards, for someone desperate for a cast."

"I don't settle. So sue me." The "I don't think you do, either" hovered on his tongue for a scant moment. It remained there. Someone who took extensive notes, supplied his own character biographies, gave notable performances despite the lack of feedback or the unglamorous nature of the role he'd been saddled with...just how long could all that last, mishandled and stagnating in a place like this?

Richard greeted a fellow cast member who'd just arrived, leaving Graham to his own musings for a while. He had nothing the other needed, Graham recognised that. But he so very badly wanted to take this man away from here. 

It was 8 a.m., and the place was starting to look busy again. Pretty soon, Mark would come in, clipboard in hand, barking out half-intelligible orders while he took stock of his surroundings and yelled for Jed. 

A glance at Richard's lap showed that his notebook still remained open. With his fellow cast member having moved on, Richard turned back to face him and had been about to say something, but, after following Graham's line of sight, blushed and closed the cover instead. 

Sniggering at his visible discomfort was probably not a good way to endear himself to the man, but Graham couldn't help himself. 

 

The following day was spent driving back to the Walsh just so he could dump the buckets of gooey props stuff that Tami wanted into their own storage area (namely a small corner in the cast conference room). Not that his minor act of theft impressed anyone. Tami told him he forgot to get mold release and modpodge, whatever the hell those were.

"I don't know props," Graham groused, while helping her move another two sheets of plywood. "Next time you want anything specific, come with me and point it out."

"I don't have _time,_ " Tami said, the tight way she closed her lips betraying her fraying patience. "You stuck me here with big plans for set designs and gave me nothing but sticks and a headache to work with. And costumes! You said you had a damn costumer, and I'm here making your damn costumes!"

"I may have exaggerated once or twice. What's your hurry, anyway? Not like we have a script yet." 

Tami threw her arms up, yanked the plywood out of Graham's arms (not an insignificant feat, considering Graham was larger and had a good grip on the things), and stalked back to her workshop. 

"God, don't aggravate her," Lee called from the high ladder leading to the arch of the proscenium. Work there seemed to be going well - there were five decorative busts now instead of one. He skipped the last two rungs and alighted on the floor, snappy as you please, then headed towards Graham in a lively jog.

Graham envied him his energy sometimes. His own coffee-fuelled reserves usually only lasted four hours before something started aching.

"Staying for good now?" Lee said, with a hearty clap on his arm. "We really should start scheduling proper rehearsals soon. How's Act 2? Written Scenes 3 and 4 yet?"

"...Lee, I've been gone a week."

"The contest is in five months!" He exhaled, hands placed on his hips. "I wonder about your sense of urgency, sometimes. Eva's a wonderful addition, by the way. She and Luke are hitting it off. I assume you want her to play Lara?"

"She and _Luke_ are hitting it off...?"

That elicited a chuckle. "Yeah. Didn't start off that way. Luke made a pass at her and she slapped him. Now they go out for coffee."

"First thing we're doing when we get money is find Luke a therapist."

" _If_ ," Lee corrected, and elaborated when Graham raised an eyebrow, "If we ever get money."

Graham snorted. "This is why I keep you around. You're such a ray of sunshine." 

"I'm not going to get my hopes up with McKellen in the roster, and neither should you." He jammed his hands into the pockets of his sweater. "Still, it's free promotion and we get to keep the sales from the box office. That's something. Where are you going?"

"Back to my car. Need to get away from the waves of optimism you're exuding."

"What, why? I thought you were done." Lee caught up to him and tugged at his shirt. "Look, work's really piling up back here..."

A sliver of guilt made Graham wince and pause. Lee was far too young to be saddled with administrative duties that he hadn't signed up for, especially since the man had been nothing but supportive despite the troubles they'd already faced. And there had been many. "I know. Sorry. Just hold the line for a few more days." Lee looked like he expected to hear more, but how much to say about Richard? The man constantly kept rebuffing Graham's invitations, and that was about the last thing he wanted to tell his co-director. _"You wouldn't believe how lucky I've been, wasting all this time trying to convince a man to join us because I can't see anyone else as Westmore now. Oh, and did I mention he's already tried to send me packing seven times?"_

"There's this actor there..." he slowly said, scratching his beard and weighing his words. "He said 'no,' but I have to try again."

Lee didn't look too happy with that news. Still, he gave a soft sigh and shrugged. "Only if he's willing, informed, and a quick study." A thought seemed to occur to him and he quickly followed up with, "Would this happen to be Eva's flatmate?"

 _Small, small world._ "And you know this because...?"

"She said you're stalking him."

The accusing tone made him bristle. "I am not!" he said, indignant, though with further thought, he _supposed_ it might seem that way...what with Graham greeting him at 6 in the morning, joining him for lunch, watching his rehearsals... "Not by the technical definition of the word..."

" _Willing_ and _informed_ , Graham," Lee emphasized, with the bogged down countenance of a man who'd had to deal with lawyers and legalese. "Get to it, then. Just remember that we're on a time crunch."

 

Handling bills (both personal and theatre-related), sleeping at 3 a.m., then driving back to the Jackson shaved six hours off his morning. Graham arrived a little past lunch time, yawning, with an empty belly and a copy of Emily Bronte's biography tucked under his arm. It had been a brief toss-up at the lobby whether to go hunting for a specific dark-haired actor or go scavenging for food. The grumble in his tummy won. 

The Jackson's canteen still had the salmon sushi and tray of oatmeal cookies that he used to gorge on way back when. He was halfway through his meal, when Richard popped into his line of sight, sporting a smile and an unopened bottle of mineral water. 

"Don't you have a play to direct?" was Richard's greeting of the day, spoken with a teasing grin while settling himself onto the seat across from him. 

He hurriedly swallowed the mouthful of rice and seaweed he'd been chewing. "So my co-director likes to remind me," he said after, and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. 

"And how's that going?"

Graham echoed Richard's smile and gave a one-shouldered shrug. "No idea. There's this actor, you see. Quite a handsome lad, nice, intelligent. Distracting. Makes me chase after him, gives me a hard time..."

Richard chuckled. The embarrassment he'd display over a teasing like that was a little less pronounced now, Graham was pleased to note. "He can't be good for you, if he's distracting you so much. Maybe you should leave him alone." 

"I would, but he thinks my writing's brilliant. How can I stay away from that?" 

The actor's eyes playfully narrowed while his tone gained an accusing edge. "You _know_ your writing's brilliant. Otherwise, you wouldn't be tossing it at people, hoping to get them to take a part in your play." Seconds later, a bit of humour left his expression. "Didn't see you yesterday, so I thought you'd thrown in the towel."

"Looking for me, were you?" Graham snickered when Richard gave him a dry look. "Dare I hope that old December's bareness hath warmed you to me? This is for you, by the way."

The bottle was set aside while Richard dragged the book closer, the tips of their fingers briefly brushing. "Bronte. You weren't kidding." He flipped the book and skimmed the blurb on the back. "You didn't have to buy a new copy..."

"Trust me, you'll want to keep it when you're done." That was presumptuous, but Graham loved it and was of the opinion everyone should read it once in their lifetime. (Though, to be fair, Graham had a long list of books he felt similarly about.) "Were rehearsals cancelled? It's almost two, and you don't seem to be in a hurry."

"Oh, I should be getting back." He picked up his water bottle and scooted out of his chair. "Mark called for five. Should be done by now."

"I'll walk with you." 

He was asked about the book on their way to the theatre house, and Graham was only too happy to indulge. It was rather unfortunate that upon their arrival, cast and crew were assembled and Mark stood right there in the middle by the directorial chair, clipboard in hand and being tapped wildly against his hip in impatience. 

"McTavish, I know you're not used to working under a timetable anymore," Mark began in what Graham recognised as his stage voice. The one Mark was under the mistaken impression held authority. "But will you please, _please_ time your flirtations so I can rehearse?!"

"Oh, Mark," Graham replied, with a wistful smile, "We'll always have LAMDA." He was conscious of the way Richard had ducked his head and hurriedly scooted behind him to abandon his book and water on a nearby audience seat (one that already held his bag and jacket). The collective attention of the room was thankfully more focused on Graham. 

"Sit your cheeky arse down," Mark grumbled. He waved for Richard to take his mark. "You've been hounding this poor man for a week. Whatever happened to our agreement? You stop when they say no!"

"I'm reading between the lines on this one." 

The smatterings of laughter were swiftly quelled by an unimpressed look from Mark. Jed called for places from the overhead speakers. The empty seat beside his erstwhile friend was tempting, but the latter had sounded royally ticked off just then. Graham decided to play it safe and took the chair close to where Richard had scattered his belongings. 

What followed was a rather interesting piece of theatre, and he absolutely didn't mean the play. For one thing, the rehearsal went smoothly, which was a rarity in itself. For another, Pierre wasn't interrupting, either with a tantrum or a grandstanding speech about his character. Despite the lack of breaks, the dynamics on the stage were far from peaceful, however. Pierre was giving Richard a very large berth during their scenes, and was quite pointedly not looking at him unless he had to. 

It took about twenty minutes before Mark called for a halt in order to discuss blocking. Richard climbed down from the forestage and jogged up to his seat, aiming for the bottle of water.

"A little tense on that stage," Graham remarked, when he was near enough. 

Richard leaned against the backrest of the chair in the lower row while he drank. Oddly enough, he looked to be in better spirits than when he came in. "Pierre was absent morning of yesterday. Said he got held up in traffic...it happens sometimes." Something about his tone implied that he found the reason for Pierre's absence unlikely. Graham was inclined to agree - he'd seen the man treat the first two hours of his attendance like some sort of waking up ritual, and once witnessed him skip out early because "he was needed elsewhere." "Mr. Hadlow did a test run on the confrontation scene with me as Macduff."

"Did he?" Graham asked, eyebrows raised. Either Mark got fed up with Pierre, or he'd become very curious about Richard. Possibly even both. "How did that go?"

"I think it went all right." 

That was Richard-speak for "it was bloody fantastic," Graham knew that much by now. He gave a soft snort.

"Pierre was livid when he arrived, though," Richard continued. "He threatened to quit."

"Out-diva'ing Mark, that couldn't have gone well."

The grin that crept onto Richard's face was both guilty and pleased. "I got to be Macduff for the entire rehearsal."

Graham laughed. He didn't even bother stopping when Pierre threw them a suspicious glare from upstage. In front of him, Richard smiled and drank his water.

"Figures something like that would happen when I'm not here," he said, once he was reduced to snickering. "Good for Mark. Thought his fangs had fallen off years ago."

"He's treating me better. Mr. Hadlow." There was nothing shy or accusing about the intent way he was looking at Graham now. Just warmth...and, he hoped, a bit of fondness. "I have you to thank for that, don't I?"

"Sure. How grateful are you?" The warm smile vanished. Graham chuckled and held up his hand. "That's actually a serious question. I _do_ have to go back to the Walsh and start working on my own play, so...is your mind quite made up?"

Richard looked down and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "This is the first well-paying job I've had in three years," he said, sounding regretful. "I can't abandon it. Not in the state I'm in right now, financially."

"How's your nephew?" Richard looked at him, puzzled. "You mentioned he was in the hospital."

"Oh, better. There was an insurance dispute, but it's settled now." He rubbed the back of his neck. "If it happens again, I'm as good as dead weight. My savings need padding."

"I see." Graham straightened in his chair. "I have one last favour to ask...if you'll indulge me. After rehearsal, of course."

A few seconds passed. Richard gave him a wary nod. "Of course."

 

Gallery #6 was a small space in the Jackson Theatre complex, two hallways away from the main auditorium, and one swift turn from the lobby leading to the dance halls. It housed a humble 80-something seats with an elevated platform at the front. A podium stood to one side, slanted and pressed against the wall - it was detachable, but no one ever bothered to store it in the backroom. It was needed often enough to be a mainstay. 

Graham had spent many hours in that room, planning out storyboards, delivering encouraging speeches to his cast, arguing with Mark or Mr. Warner. He'd considered it his, simply because people often forgot it existed and it was always free. _Noise_ was what he remembered, stepping in - countless hours debating and yelling and defending. Little battles he often hadn't won.

He sought it now for silence. The audience seats were clean enough, but he had opted for the edge of the raised platform instead. Richard had followed suit. The latter was sitting cross-legged, facing him, script on the raised floor and studiously being read. There wasn't a sound in the room apart from the occasional turning of a page. Graham waited with his legs spread, calves dangling above the ground, hands holding Richard's bottled water for him while he struggled to keep his impatience from showing.

He wanted this to go well. This _had_ to go well. 

He could nearly pinpoint the exact moment when Richard realised something was up. Graham had each turn of a page timed to a rough estimate, and Richard was a few beats too late. The sound never came. He turned his head, a coil of dread knotting his stomach, and saw the stiff shoulders, the awkward way pale fingers too tightly held the corner of a page, raised and frozen in an aborted lift. Richard's eyes were darting over the sentences, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was reading.

The hurt came much slower. Subtle, but present.

"Read it through first," Graham pre-empted, and had to harden his resolve when blue eyes met his own. "I promise, if this makes you uncomfortable or offends you, it gets scrapped. The lot of it."

He bore the stare a few tense seconds longer. This time, when Richard resumed his reading, Graham didn't let his attention stray. _Body language_ , Luke's mocking voice rang in his head, and there was much to see. From the way Richard kept picking at his nails, to the unconscious manner he kept rubbing his right thigh.

It was probably ten minutes later when he reached the last page. "It's beautiful," Richard said. After a time, he took a long, steadying breath. "And it makes me uncomfortable and offends me."

Graham winced and rubbed his bearded chin. "I was hoping you'd give it a few more hours' thought."

"You took a few lines from my notebook and just ran away with them, didn't you?" Richard's voice wasn't louder, but the hard edge it had taken on was arresting. "Here they are, in eleven pages. Expanded, explored, laid bare -"

"Wait -"

"This was _personal_."

"Calm down," Graham quickly interrupted, ignoring the annoyed huff of breath Richard released, "This is just a draft that I wrote overnight -"

"Who was Westmore based on, before all these changes?"

He frowned, trying - and failing - to trace the significance of this question. " _No one_ ," he answered, squarely meeting Richard's gaze. "Not before you. Westmore was -"

"I don't believe you -"

" _Westmore was_ ," Graham interrupted, and waited until he was sure Richard wouldn't speak, "a vessel, a frame, through which we could witness and experience the horrors of his time. That is all I ever saw him as, even when the story stopped being about the factors he couldn't control and started being about himself."

"Well, _great_. He should have stayed that way." Richard rubbed his mouth, fingers sliding all the way across a cheek and slipping down his jaw. It was a mannerism Graham had only witnessed from the man once, when Pierre was ranting to Mark about how understudies were a complete waste of space and money. He wasn't sure if it was a nervous habit, or something he did to keep himself from saying something he'd regret.

"Things happen, sometimes," Graham said, gently, while tapping his fingers on the edge of the script. "Little things, unpredictable things. The tone changes, characters jump out from the page, or..." he made an open-handed, helpless gesture at the younger man, "I find an actor that I know could turn the vessel into so much more. And then I adjust. I have to. 

"That is _my_ theatre, Richard. That is how I run my stage. It might not have Shakespeare's panache or Welles's recalcitrance, but it is a form of truth, nonetheless, and one that I wish to deliver to the audience in as pure and edible a form as possible." 

He wasn't even sure if Richard had heard all that. The man was looking down at the script - either intentionally avoiding Graham's eyes, or too upset to bother. There was another long pause before he spoke again, in a quieter voice: "How much of my notebook did you really read?"

It was all too tempting to lie, just then. "More than I let on," Graham replied, in as frank a tone as he could manage. "Not nearly enough."

"And if I were to join you...? Will there be other _drafts_ like this?"

He supposed he deserved that. "Maybe. There'll be more of you in Westmore, if you let me. Maybe even more than you're willing to give at this point, and I _am_ sorry that this addition was made without your control or your knowledge. But that's why I'm here right now. Westmore, this draft of Act 2, Scene 3 - entirely up to you."

The seconds ticked by. 

"This is cheating," Richard eventually said, with a brief, dry laugh. Graham frowned. "It has to be. I can't know this exists and have another actor perform it now."

"You could still tell me to fuck off and bin the draft."

"I could," Richard solemnly agreed. "God help me, but I don't want you to." 

"That _almost_ sounds like a yes."

Richard leaned back and released a loud breath. "It's a 'maybe.' I have to check with my agent, my bank account, expenses, the rent... a lot of things." He looked utterly drained, rubbing his hand over his face like that. "I'll let you know."

 

_Got us our Westmore._

Graham sighed and rubbed away the cricks in his neck. Richard's e-mail was still open on his laptop. It had taken him four whole days to reply, and every hour had been agony. Time well-spent, regardless, as Graham had used the reprieve to polish up Scene 3 and write a bit of Scene 4.

His phone buzzed, and he unlocked the screen to Lee's text: _THANK GOD,_ it read. Another buzz. _He better be good. I've gotten attached to that mess of a role._

Graham chuckled. _Told him to come in on Monday, you can congratulate me or cry bitter, angry tears then._


	4. The Walsh

"So, when's Boy Wonder coming in?"

"At 9 so everyone's here. I see we're still missing Manu, however." Graham looked past Lee to take quick stock of the Walsh house. Most of the cast were scattered around the auditorium, a good number at the stage, knee-deep in wood glue and paint with Tami supervising the impromptu let's-help-with-the-props-so-Ms. Lane-doesn't-go-insane session. Mentally, he ticked off several names, though there were a few faces he didn't recognise, and some that he _thought_ had left, but apparently hadn't. God, he'd probably going to have to start carrying one of those clipboards again. "And don't call him that," he added, distracted. "Especially not to his face."

"Really?" Lee's eyebrows rose. "Can he not take a joke, this actor of yours?" 

"He's not my actor. And I'm sure he can." Maybe. Actually, Graham wasn't sure. He seemed to take most teasing well enough, but with that disconcerting, self-deprecating angle to his reactions that often made Graham hold back a little on his jokes. "He's just a little..." His hand hovered in the air while he tried to find the words. Serious? Skittish? Sensitive?

Bugger.

He gave Lee a too-wide smile instead. "He requires a bit of careful handling, is all. No, no, don't give me that look. That sounded egregious. He's _fine._ We're all _fine_ , and you'll be meeting him soon. Ah, Evangeline!" The actress in question obligingly veered towards where he and Lee were standing. She looked obscenely chipper considering the hour, although the tall, partially-consumed cup of extra strong espresso in her hand might account for that. "And how have you been finding the Walsh?"

"It's been great!" she said, eyes sparkling. "It's like a little workshop!"

"Oh." Graham could feel his smile growing stiff. "Great. I'm glad to see you fitting in."

"I'm going to wait for Richard at the foyer in case he gets lost."

"'Like a little workshop,'" he grumbled, once Evangeline was out of sight.

"Don't take it personally," Lee said, laughter in his voice. "She called the Jackson a 'cute little venue' just the other day."

"What is _wrong_ with her?"

"She's been everywhere, including the Foxwoods. I'm sure this looks tiny compared to that."

Graham grumbled something under his breath, mostly to disguise how reluctantly impressed he was. The Foxwoods was an enormous 1,900-seater, while the Walsh was a humble 500-seater venue. The Jackson boasted a proud 900. It had been quite an adjustment period for him, working in the Walsh after decades of having to deal with the Jackson's wide, empty spaces, but he'd come to greatly appreciate the intimacy that the smaller space provided. It also made tech days far less painful. 

Evangeline's excited chatter from the front of house heralded Richard's arrival. 9 a.m., on the dot. Of course. The man himself entered warily, trusty bag strapped over a shoulder, a nondescript folder in one hand and Evangeline dragging the other. He seemed to be in good enough spirits, laughing at something she had said. The smile remained on his lips when he bid Graham a good morning.

If Graham's answering smile was an inch this side of cloying, he was attributing it to all the early mornings he no longer felt he had to wake up to. Vaguely, he was aware of a gradual reduction of noise in the auditorium, people's attention angling towards them while trying to remain discreet. 

"Lee, meet Richard Armitage; Richard, meet Lee Pace. Co-director and erstwhile actor, though I hear he's playing nanny these days."

"We have a bunch of children in the cast, Graham included," Lee sportingly said. He shook Richard's hand. "Hopefully returning to co-directing and stage management, now that you're here."

"Pleasure to meet you," Richard said.

Graham gestured at the folder Richard held. "Documents I requested...? Yes, we'll take it off your hands. I'll introduce you to the rest of the cast later, but for now - oh. Well, the monkey waving upstage is Luke, and the little hellion beside him is Adam. Go say hi before Luke breaks something." 

Evangeline was only too happy to drag Richard towards the rowdy group upstage. He glanced at Lee. The younger man was giving Graham a very puzzled, sceptical look over the opened folder in his hands. "Yes?" he prompted.

"Westmore?"

"Yes, that is whom he will be playing," Graham replied smoothly, though from Lee's tone, he could already see where this conversation was heading. 

"He looks like an action hero."

"We all have our faults." 

"And have you seen this?" He showed a specific portion of the bared page, under the "Previous Performances" section of Richard's CV. "He was in CATS."

"Don't be so judgmental."

"Graham... _you_ were the one who told me we were avoiding musical theatre performers. You made me turn away three applicants." 

"Think that rule got binned when we decided Luke could stick around." Graham chuckled at the face Lee was making. "Look, first reading's today. Reserve your judgment 'til then, all right?"

"All right." The scepticism wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, Graham guessed. That was fine. He'd predicted as much. "I'm drawing strength from the sheer fact that you willingly woke up at 8 in the morning for this guy."

"Six, actually. It was bloody cold, too. I want credit for that."

Lee looked suitably impressed. "Six? I'm expecting miracles from him now. I couldn't even make you get up at eight."

"Oh, shut your face."

"Not to alarm either of you," Adam Brown said in a hushed voice, having quietly approached the two of them while they were conversing, "but you might want to give Luke something to do if you don't want your new recruit to run away."

Graham's eyes darted upstage. So much for easing Richard into things - the man was looking slightly overwhelmed and wearing a rather prominent blush now. Luke was beside him and happily invading his personal space.

"Jesus," Lee remarked, with a touch of marvel. "He's singing in his ear."

Graham groaned. "Evans!"

The actor in question raised his head, innocent smile at the ready. "What?"

"Good God man, he hasn't been here a day."

His concern was answered with a light shrug. "That just proves he's irresistible."

"It proves you have a problem. Go tell an intern that we need Conference Room A ready for a cast meeting." That wiped the mischief off Luke's face, at least. He watched until the young man was out of the room. "Sorry about that, Richard."

"It's...uh. Quite all right," Richard said. Soon after, he was distracted once again by Evangeline hauling him off to meet someone else. 

"He's pretty smashing, by the way," Adam eagerly chimed in. 

Graham raised his eyebrows at Lee while wearing a smug smile. " _Adam_ thinks he's smashing. _Adam_ isn't being all negative on the first day of proper rehearsals over a new actor." At Adam's curious look, he explained: "Lee here's been having doubts when he's only known him for five minutes."

"I feel misled," Lee defensively said. 

"He seems like a nice enough guy." Wide, curious eyes turned to Graham. "He's playing Rippler, right?"

His co-director didn't even bother muffling his snicker. Graham sighed.

 

"Ladies and gentlemen of the unfortunately untitled Boyens Competition production...your prodigal director has returned."

And out broke the hoots and the enthusiastic applause (which fanned his guilt somewhat because it might have sounded just a _touch_ too loud and too desperate). Almost everyone was present - the only ones missing were Dean and Manu, and Dean had called ahead to say he was going to try and talk his friend into joining up with them. Manu was a little harder to predict, since if he wasn't teaching body sculpting lessons in a prominent gym a town away, then he was tending to one of his physical recovery patients.

To be fair, most of the faces in the conference room staring at him now weren't any better, schedule-wise. Some were students looking for summer experience, some out-of-work theatre actors hoping to pad their CVs, and quite a number were upfront with the fact that they'd be jumping ship as soon as they found a paying job, but would be along for the ride until then.

Well, "beggars can't be choosers," and all that. Still, he was rather proud of the talent they'd amassed, however few were actually in it for the long haul. "I come bearing gifts," he continued, when the clapping had died down, "courtesy of Mark Hadlow, director extraordinaire when the wind's blowing in the right direction, and our ever-gentle cousin from two towns east. Two talented actors, one of whom has already embedded herself rather successfully into our little family. Welcome, Evangeline and Richard."

The greetings from the surrounding cast members were fairly warm. A relief, since Graham had been worried that the ease by which he'd got Evangeline would come with unforeseen complications. With a flourish, he raised his copy of the script high in the air and said, "I am also happy to inform you that we now have...Act 2, Scene 3."

More clapping, accompanied by a few teasing remarks ("Were you at gunpoint?" "Just one more year and we'll have Scene 4!" etc.) He lowered the script and held up a hand. "Don't skip to it just yet - Lee, I'm looking at you. Now that we're all gathered here today, let's do an easy reading of the script, familiarize ourselves with it, who these people are, what they're all about, and hopefully get a better look at the length and the pacing. I understand we have some casting issues?"

Several people raised their hands. They had two Belmonts and three Patricias, apparently. It took thirty minutes to sort it all out, and they ended up with all the actors on hand having parts, but being three actors short in total. Lee volunteered to read the lines of the characters missing their actors for now. Two of the temps read for Dean's and Manu's parts - Graham hoped they wouldn't get too attached and that this wouldn't create an issue later. They'd already informed Lee earlier that they were heading for greener pastures two weeks hence.

While trying to straighten out the mess, he caught Lee sneaking a peak at Scene 3. He was tempted, very briefly, to call him out on it, but decided otherwise. The strength of the material was what got him to stay, after all. The younger man had signed up at the Walsh for a two-month program as a stage manager after graduating from Julliard. A gift from his family, he'd said, as he'd always wanted to visit Western Europe. The two had met during one of Hugo's productions, and it was one of the most painless recruitments Graham had ever made. (Until now, of course. Evangeline sort of set a record.)

Well, Lee's _recruitment_ had been painless. Maintenance had been less so. During the third month, Graham became accidentally privy to a bit of family trouble when Lee's father called the Walsh and he'd answered, with Lee arriving just a minute too late to take the call. The frantic man had danced nervously in front of his desk with every response he'd spoken into the receiver. It had taken Graham an embarrassing amount of time before he could recognise the universal hand gestures for "Oh, God, please stop talking now." 

_"I'msosorry but Dad thinks I enrolled in a Masters course, can you please answer like you'rekindofsortofmy professor?"_ had been Lee's rushed explanation. 

The conversation following that first call had turned a little too serious for Graham's liking, but he'd felt a measure of empathy for the younger man. Not with the overprotective parents part - honestly, at thirty-something, Lee really should have free reign over his life, especially in this industry - but the younger man had been swept through the theatre scene before he could figure out what he wanted to specialise in, and now, his friends and family were foisting him onto talent agencies and Hollywood casting calls. He'd found his true calling rather late, in the humble and intimate walls of the Walsh Theatre, and it looked like he was preparing himself to fight for it when the time came. Eventually. For now, though, Graham would just have to answer a few more calls from a rather concerned father every third Monday.

Graham envied people such epiphanies sometimes. There had been a period during his younger days when he felt like he'd been at a crossroads. He still wondered what his life would be like now if he'd decided to seriously pursue acting instead. 

"All right," he said, not allowing himself to dwell on it, thumping both hands on the conference desk and re-gathering everyone's attention. "Let's begin. Act 1, Scene 1, enter Lara, Matheson, and Cabrera..."

 

There was an annoying thumping noise occurring downstairs in his house at 8-bloody-a.m. on a Saturday.

_'Knock'._ His murky, waking brain helpfully supplied. _It's called 'knocking'._ After a quick glance at the digital clock on his nightstand, he groaned and turned over on the bed, feeling the blanket slip from the tangle around his knees and land on the floor. _And this is called ignoring it until it goes away._

Fuck, it was cold. The knocking started again. It could be something urgent, but he'd spent all of last night going over the script, making numerous edits and tweaks, and, short of a fire, he wasn't about to relinquish the morphine-levels of comfort his current position provided. Not for anyone insane enough to wake up early on a weekend and expect others to do the same, and not even for his damned blanket.

The next thing that woke him was the whimsical singing of two birds flitting about somewhere near his window. He stared at the two creatures for several minutes (no more than flashes of feathers from his vantage point), contemplating the strange courtship dance they were conducting, which somehow morphed into morose thoughts about the life of Jane Eyre. 

He glanced at the clock and saw that it was 2 p.m. That was more like it. He hauled himself up against his pillows, joints protesting and limbs still mostly asleep. His body was in a deplorable state, by his standards - he'd never really managed to rid of himself of his vanity despite pursuing a less glamorous career. But writing was stressful, and time at the desktop computer (or in pursuit of things that made being at the desktop computer less abhorrent) often meant his gym membership gained a cobweb collection. 

That was what he told himself, anyway. He grabbed his phone and frowned when he saw three new messages. The first one was from Lee:

_I forgot to tell you yesterday: Richard asked when a good time would be to visit, so he might come around this weekend._

"Oh...shit. Oh, fuck." _Goddammit Lee, you could have said "not eight."_ The other two texts were from Richard - one asking if he was home, and the second apologizing for not calling first and asking when a good time was to drop by. He dialled his number.

"Richard? Yes, sorry. I was asleep. Come over now if you like."

 

Turned out it hadn't been long since Richard's latest text, and he was still in the area, having a late lunch after a personal errand. Graham ushered the younger man in, taking a second to appreciate the snug way his plain, long-sleeved shirt was emphasizing his leanness, and settled him at the kitchen counter with a large cup of coffee and a batch of (hopefully not old) biscuits. 

"Did I wake you?" Richard asked, worry plain in his voice. Graham tried to wave away his concern, but he continued, "I did, didn't I? If you want to do this some other time..."

"Now is fine. I'm surprised no one told you that I usually sleep in on weekends, though." Or weekdays. But that was a moot point now, since with rehearsals underway, he'd have to actually start coming in at a semi-decent hour.

"I did ask Lee what time was appropriate. He sort of sniggered and said 'not 7.'"

Cheeky bugger. "Eight might have been fine, but I got caught up in work last night and slept later than normal. Any reason _you_ wake up early on weekends?"

Richard shrugged. "Habit. One of my previous jobs required the ensemble to be up at 5 in the morning, and I think my bioclock has been messed up since." He gave Graham a mock-suspicious glare. "Besides, you kept going to the Jackson at 6."

"Now, _that_ ," Graham replied, his own mug raised, "was for a good cause."

Richard laughed. "Oh, so, now that you have me, you're not making much of an effort anymore?"

"Now that I 'have you', so to speak - and I don't, by the way, your contract explicitly says you can leave since we're not paying you - I can actually concentrate on getting this play up and running. Speaking of which, any concerns? Must be serious for you to come all the way out here."

"Well, no..." He set aside his mug and rummaged in his bag. A pen and a notebook (new this time, without a scratch or fold on the cover) were placed on the counter. "I was wondering if I could ask you about Westmore." 

Graham couldn't help the enchanted little smile that crept into his expression - Westmore was getting his own little notebook. "We have a thing for that," he said, utterly charmed. "It's called 'cast meeting'." 

His amusement seemed to leave Richard at a loss. "Oh...if you'd rather -"

"No, no. I meant I opened the floor for questions yesterday, and you didn't ask any." Despite Evangeline and Adam not pulling any punches. Even Luke had a query or two. One of the (admittedly many) reasons they let Luke get away with his naughtiness was how he was always very well-behaved during rehearsals. One would think that should be a character staple and nothing to be grateful for in an actor, but oh, one would be very, very mistaken. 

"I would have taken up too much time."

"Considering Luke ate up three hours over one character flaw, I'm rather scared to ask what you consider as 'too much'." 

"Maybe not three hours," Richard admitted, albeit hesitantly. 

With Richard's first day in the Walsh still fresh in his mind, Graham said, "I forgot to warn you, and I do apologise for this, but Luke can get a little...'driven on by the flesh', as it were. Don't take what he says outside of rehearsal seriously, because he certainly doesn't."

"Thanks, but I'm not twelve," Richard countered, with a small chuckle. "I know enough to keep him at arm's length."

"So you do." That was one worry out of the way. Hook-ups among the cast was one of his most recurring headaches - not in and of itself, but the cock-ups that usually resulted in the inevitable fallouts. Adding complicated romantic entanglements on top of the complex emotions required from actors was a foolproof recipe for disaster, and it always happened. Every. Single. Time.

If there were any other causes for his relief...well. Those, he could mull about later. He had a play to direct.

Coffee drained in two gulps, Graham set the mug aside and sat across from Richard, hands on the countertop and affecting a more serious air. "All right. What do you want to know?"

Everything, it turned out. Richard delved, and delved, and delved, until Graham thought he'd run out of answers. These characters had been in his mind for the better part of two years, but he hadn't had to explain a single one with the amount of detail this actor was demanding of him. It was both refreshing and stimulating, and oddly collaborative. Some of the things Richard would say in passing, or replies that he gave whenever Graham turned the question back at him, would incidentally reinforce one or two story elements he wanted to write into the play's remaining unwritten scene. 

It wasn't just the abstract concepts either. At some point in their conversation, Richard took out his copy of the script, although it was hardly recognisable from the clean printout Graham had provided him just the day prior. Highlights, margin scribbles, creases, and post-it notes riddled the pages. It looked like a war zone. Briefly, Graham wondered if that was how he tackled every acting role he'd ever been given. 

With script in hand, Richard focused on specific lines of dialogue, inquiring as to the motivations and rationale behind each action and reaction. It reminded him so much of Cate, and the enthused way she'd bring people together at one table and then hash everything out, making sure everyone was on the same page. 

_Or used to_ , he mournfully thought, as that particular spark had been snuffed out in her when he hadn't been looking.

_Well, then._ Richard was concentrating on finding a particular line that he'd wanted to ask about, the creases on his brows pronounced, tongue peeking out from between his lips, and charmingly oblivious to the blatant way he was being observed. _Let's make sure this one doesn't die on us._

 

"Oh God, the time..."

Graham grinned at the embarrassed way Richard was rubbing his neck. He'd noticed that it was getting late about an hour ago, but didn't have the heart to say so as he'd actually been enjoying himself. At a little past 8 p.m., what lit the roads outside now were street lamps and house lights. They'd gone through two cups of coffee, four cups of tea, and three bags of crisps heaped into a bowl. Not exactly healthy fare. "Twenty more minutes, and I can fix us a proper dinner, if you can wait that long," he offered before he could think better of it. 

"No, I've already taken too much of your - twenty minutes, really?"

"No, not really." Graham's smile was languid and smug. "I meant more along the lines of eighteen." His fridge was unfortunately a little sparse, but he still had that large cut of salmon meant for when his relatives visited next week. Instead of marinating it like he'd intended, he was going to have to yank a recipe from his LAMDA days of trying to get laid.

Richard wasn't bothering to disguise his scepticism. "You're lying."

"Oh, now you're just daring me to bring it down to fifteen."

It ended up being twenty-two. Richard called him out on his posturing, and Graham argued that it still counted because had he known they were having dinner, he would have had the salmon thawing in the sink instead of sticking it into the microwave prior to baking. Richard's response to that had been "It wouldn't be impressive if you didn't include prep," to which Graham just made a face and told him to eat his dinner.

Despite his failure to sufficiently dazzle his guest with the cooking time, Richard seemed impressed with the food anyway, judging from the pleased noise he made after the first bite. 

It belatedly occurred to him, mid-chew and while noticing the way laughter added to the creases around Richard's eyes (the man was surprisingly giggly), that this whole scenario might not exactly be considered appropriate. If one cared about such things, of course, which Graham didn't. Richard was cautious enough for both of them anyway, so it was probably best to just follow his lead on this one, and none of this seemed to be pinging the younger man's skittishness any.

They kept the conversation during the meal light, with Graham entertaining his guest with humiliating stories about either Adam or Lee ("They won't mind me saying this..."), and Richard giving a humorous account or two of his previous experiences in musical ensembles. Carefully devoid of names or details, Graham noted. If he'd been talking to Adam, he would have poked and prodded just to see the young actor squirm, but he held off on that particular instinct this time. 

"I've robbed you of your weekend and your food," Richard said after the meal, while helping clear away the plates. 

"It wasn't a bother. What is this, by the way?" Graham made a vague gesture at the counter, where the script and Richard's notebook still lay. "Is this how you prefer to work?"

Richard gave him a puzzled look. "I'm not sure I follow."

"We could do your notes this way. Not all of them, of course. The ones we can take our time with."

His mouth opened in an "oh" of realisation. It took him a while to answer, his eyes sweeping across the room, as if taking stock of everything they had done for the entire day with a fresh perspective. "Whichever you prefer is fine."

"No, I'm asking what works for _you_." Graham leaned against the sink. He let his voice acquire a bit of the gravitas that he used whenever he was speaking as a director, and observed how its presence seemed to loosen the sudden stiffness in Richard's shoulders. "Luke, for example, is very much a moment-to-moment sort, absorbs instruction much better in his dressing room right before a performance. Adam needs to be walked through sometimes, but when he's seen it once, he nails it right after."

Richard mulled this over for a minute. "I don't want to cut into your rest day..."

"A few hours from a Saturday and I still have all of Sunday left. Not much of a cut."

"...and do you really have time to be doing this on top of writing and directing?"

"I'll make time. I make time for all the others." He shrugged. "Besides, you're our Westmore. You can have all of my time that you want."

For some reason, that made Richard smile at the floor. "Then, yes. This, uh...this works for me."

"All right, then. Same time here next week."

"'Same time here' at ten?" Richard asked, with a teasing grin. 

Graham made a face and rocked his right hand. "'Same time here' at one."


	5. Chapter 5

Their first stage rehearsal was the much-needed morale boost Graham hadn't even realised they were starving for. 

His mind had blanked, the only coherent thought left being a quiet, awe-filled _"There it is."_

It was all there - the half-finished set, the ill-dressed actors, the messy lighting cues. All in need of work, but very much headed in a solid direction.

And at centre stage, there was Westmore. Wearing a pair of crocs and a black cardigan, of all things, but Westmore nonetheless, with all the reticence, understated strength, and vulnerability that Graham could ask for.

Well, Luke was there too, as Patrick, and had been performing remarkably. But they'd run into a Westmore speech, and all eyes were currently on Richard.

"You might want to close your mouth some," Adam remarked from the audience seat beside his. "Actually, no, leave it open. You look smug now."

"I can see it, Adam." Unintended, his whisper had come out heavy with emotion. Beyond them, Richard's voice filled the room, carrying rather easily in the cozy space of the Walsh. "Months of drifting on stormy seas, and we're finally sailing into harbour."

"May want to knock on wood before the day's done." 

The quick rejoinder stayed at the tip of his tongue. He felt a rushed tapping on his shoulder, followed by Lee hurriedly occupying the seat to his left; eyes fixed on the stage, a smile on his face. "I see why you were so eager to get this guy."

Graham gave a surreptitious laugh, gratified to see his own excitement reflected on Lee's face. "To think he was just rotting in the Jackson. Doubts finally allayed?"

"On this particular issue, yes. God. I can listen to him for hours." Lee bit his lower lip. "It's finally happening, isn't it?"

He smiled. "Yeah. It is." 

On the stage, Richard spoke the lines signalling Patrick's exit. Graham flipped through the pages to make sure and said, "Isn't there a lighting cue coming up...?"

"Shit. Right." Lee rushed back to the show control booth. 

The warming down of the lights was late by two seconds, which was loudly and gleefully pointed out by Graham, with an added, "Any more of this and we'll be cutting stage management's weed allowance." Through the narrow window of the upper booth, he could just make out Lee giving him the finger.

The scene lasted another seven minutes, mostly smooth, apart from one or two dropped lines and missed stage cues. Stage management called for a thirty minute lunch break. Adam stretched and gave Graham a wide smile. "We should have done this on day one," he said. "Maybe we wouldn't have lost two more actors."

Graham frowned. "Two left?"

"Manu called in, said he can't come in anymore." That wasn't much of a surprise, Graham thought. "Brett got into a cruise ship job and sort of just up and went."

That last one might have been more unforeseen. He thought Brett had had mainstay potential, but the man had mentioned some money problems a few weeks back. "Still not as bad as when we did Mackers," he recalled, shuddering at the memory.

"That's not really saying much," his young confidant happily supplied. "Especially with the disaster that was your third attempt."

"Whatever. It still opened."

"What still opened?"

They both looked up at Richard's voice, who was passing them to reach the seat beside Adam's. Bag, jacket, and notebook were stacked just as haphazardly as they were at the Jackson, Graham saw. Adam eagerly leaned in his direction. "Mackers in the Jackson, 2005. Since then, it's been on Graham's never-in-a-million years list."

Richard laughed while he opened his water bottle. "You have a list?"

"Seven entries, give or take," Graham answered. "Mackers is at the very top, though. Never staging a play that I can't even pronounce the name of outside of rehearsal, ever again."

Adam snickered. "He slipped once, you see. Mr. Warner dropped in right after rehearsal, Graham called for five, they got into an argument, and he just up and yelled the name while trying to make a point." 

" _Gasps_ , all around me. I think someone fainted."

"Then Percy tripped during one of his exits and cut his leg. Like a little scrape down here." Pant sleeve yanked up, Adam trailed his finger across a 3 cm spot on his calf. "Far milder than the accidents we handled the year before then."

"Not that people remembered. Adam here needed eleven stitches just the season prior." He released an annoyed huff. "Meanwhile, people went on and on about Percy's scraped leg. And had the gall to blame _me_ for the poor ticket sales."

"Well, you _were_ the Artistic Director," said Adam, with a playful grin. "If it wasn't the curse, it was probably your bad direction."

The cheeky devil. "Why, _thank you_ , Adam. I do need a volunteer for taking inventory of the props room this weekend."

"You're not paying me enough to step foot in that place, much less take inventory."

"I'm not paying you at all. Doesn't alter that _someone_ owes me, and the props room needs sorting."

"You're really milking this, aren't you?" Adam elbowed Richard before he left. "Don't ever owe this man a favour."

"I'll try not to," Richard called after him. As soon as Adam was outside of hearing range, he said, "I don't think you can afford to antagonise your actors."

"That's just Adam. He doesn't count. _Fantastic_ scene, by the way." He patted the recently-vacated seat.

"Luke gives great energy. I cocked up the blocking, didn't I?" The last was said with a wince while Richard seated himself.

"Just a bit. You were spot on until 'Never have I met,' where I think you lost your light for a while." Graham skimmed through the script and his mess of scribbles. "You also dropped two lines from your 'That we should be forced to war' speech."

"I did? Which ones...? Oh, shit."

Graham patted Richard on the shoulder. "Plenty of time to patch things up. We'll start again from the top after lunch. Go. Feed yourself. We're not the Jackson, but the actor's bar serves a pretty good roast on Wednesdays."

He waved away Richard's offer to join them, hoping to catch Lee before he went for a meal himself. His co-director showed up a few minutes later, walking in on Graham while the latter had his head in his hands.

"We have no Rippler," Graham said, raising his head and fixing Lee with a worried look.

"Yeah...I wasn't sure when to bring that up." Lee hunched his shoulders. "Any candidates?"

He leaned back with a deep sigh. "Luke?"

Lee's lips pursed, mulling the swap. "Maybe. He seems to really like doing Patrick, though."

"He might warm up to the idea. Patrick isn't even in all of Act 2. Barring that..." He fixed Lee with a meaningful look. The poor, unsuspecting man's expression went from pensive to wide-eyed panic in one second flat.

"You're kidding, right? I already...I couldn't be farther from Rippler if you put cow bells on me -"

"May I remind you that you first thought Richard wasn't Westmore-material?" He held up a hand to forestall Lee's further protests. "Just drop by my house this weekend, read for him. Let's see how it goes."

After a while, Lee nodded, but not before releasing a quick, frustrated sigh. "And what do we do for now?"

"Why, we rehearse." Graham clapped him on the arm as he rose. "Still twelve scenes from Act 1 and a few from Act 2 that we can work on. Pray for a miracle while I talk to Luke."

 

Graham hadn't really worked with Luke for very long - the man had a few stand-in performances for Hugo under his belt - but he'd learnt to read the actor some. The polite manner he held his smile and the way he didn't quite look Graham in the eye said everything that he didn't out loud. _"Sure, if it can't be helped. I'm here for you,"_ were his exact words. 

He could push the issue, but his heart wasn't really in it. Luke had taken to Patrick's role like a dog to a bone, and as much as Graham needed a stand-in for Rippler, it was rare enough that he found actors that completely and willingly inhabited the characters he created. 

During the weekend, Lee knocked on his front door, carrying a bag of groceries (lunch, good lad), and looking much like a child being forced to eat his vegetables. Spotting Richard already in the living room cheered him up some, at least. While their late lunch was heating in the oven, Lee and Richard went over Act 2, Scene 2, and the far more emotional Act 2, Scene 11.

It was all very disheartening, really.

Instead of his next line, Lee said, with an air of frustration matching what Graham felt inch by inch, "This isn't working, is it?" 

Richard hummed. "I don't know. It's rather nice?"

 _'It's rather nice,' he says._ Graham gave him an admonishing look. Politeness had a place, and it currently wasn't in this living room, while his innards were boiling in a mixture of annoyance and panic. "It's terrible. It is _worse_ than terrible, and we can't afford not to have a Rippler by next week."

Two voices muttered a low "Sorry." In unison and with equal amounts of hurt. Dear God, please save him from sensitive actors. "It's not either of you...Lee, your Rippler's actually closer to what I imagined him to be." Which was contributing to his frustration, unfortunately. Manu played Rippler with a bit of maniacal enthusiasm - very, very far from what Graham thought when he was writing the character, but it had been so unexpected and so well-executed that he'd given the role to the man in a heartbeat. The subsurface cunning he'd initially envisioned was there in Lee's voice, but...

"But the two of you aren't...you're not...not..." He gave up trying to find the words and just laced the fingers of his hands together.

"Harmonizing?" Richard offered.

"Yes. Thank you." Bit too musical theatre for his tastes, but there you go.

"We can work on that...try to manufacture it."

"I'd say yes, if we had time. But we don't. And I promised Lee here that if the reading didn't work, I wouldn't be a pain about it. Unless he's somehow changed his mind...yeah, see? He's shaking his head."

"Sorry," Lee said, with an apologetic hunch to his shoulders. "You know I'd rather run stage direction."

"Oh God, what are we going to do?" Graham rubbed his face and just let his palms slide downwards, stretching his skin and not caring how he looked. Less than four months left, cast in shambles, lines to learn, one more scene to write, set design unfinished, and to top it all off, McKellen was already doing the media round, hyping the public about his play. There wasn't a local channel that didn't mention his name at least once every hour. "Any idea how the other productions are doing?" 

"Ian seems to be setting the tone. Everyone's going the NDA route, apart from a few leaks here and there. And Holmes's play, of course."

"Bully for us." It was petty, but ill news of the other plays would have eased his nerves some. Nothing quite like a fellow panicking director to make the burden a little less heavy. A glance at the sofa showed Richard rubbing the back of his neck, looking highly uncertain. "Richard?"

It took him a while to respond. "Ever think that, maybe, _I'm_ the one who -"

Graham narrowed his eyes. "No."

"Listen for a second -"

"No. I know where you're going with this..."

"- could reprise Westmore, and I could -"

" _No!_ " Graham released a loud sigh and leaned back into his chair. "But _thank you_ for reminding me why we don't talk about this stuff in front of the actors."

It was a bit of a surprise when Richard matched him glare for glare this time. Graham's annoyance rose when the actor turned a pointed, inquiring glance at _Lee_ instead, as if to appeal to the more rational director. He only barely stifled a snort.

His co-director looked both amused and alarmed at suddenly being caught between the two. "Yeah. What he said," Lee muttered, with a tilt of his head towards Graham and an apologetic grimace. 

"We'll find someone," Graham said, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice but trying, as much as he was able, to inject some form of assurance in there somewhere. Richard _worried_. He needed to remember that. "And if we don't, then we'll pull in a favour. We're not in trouble yet."

He'd been about to say more, since Richard hardly looked convinced, but his phone rang. Lee excused himself to get their food out of the oven, and Richard offered to help with the plates. 

The two were talking in hushed tones in the kitchen, that much Graham could glean. Like conniving little bandits. But his attention was completely diverted from them when Hugo's voice - and, soon after, his reason for calling - had him yelling over the phone for twenty straight minutes. 

 

"...Graham?"

He looked up from his carefully-prepared plate of steak, steamed vegetables, and mashed potatoes into the worried eyes of his companions. Vaguely, he could recall somehow managing to find his way to the dinner table after Hugo's phone call, but not much else.

"You two eat," he said, his voice low and a little raspy. "My appetite's, just..." He made an exploding gesture with his hand that he hoped was sufficient.

"We can't eat with you like this. Care to tell us what the call was about?" A beat of silence later, Lee added: "You're worrying Richard."

Richard was looking more spooked than worried, Graham thought, though that did make him pick up a fork. His two younger companions' plates looked untouched. He pulled his own closer and stabbed a piece of steak.

"Did the Walsh catch fire?" Richard hesitantly asked.

He gave a dry laugh. "I wish it had. We are losing," he raised his fork with a flourish, a bite of meat stuck on one end, "the venue." 

Richard's eyes grew comically wide. Lee gaped like a fish out of water. 

A manic chuckle rose from his throat. He shoved food into his mouth and spoke while chewing. "If we weren't in the shitter before, we certainly are now."

"I...didn't even know Mr. Weaving was accepting bookings," Lee hesitantly said.

"Neither did I. Neither did _he_ , but some bigwig called and said he wants the theatre for four whole months of corporate projects. And a wedding." As delicious as the steak was, his appetite didn't seem ready to return any time soon. He pushed the plate away again. "I can't really blame Hugo. The Walsh had a bad year, and it needs this if it's to make it through the winter. Just wish it didn't have to happen now."

"How soon? Do we clear out this week?"

"No, that'll put us out of our misery too quickly, won't it? We have the Walsh for two more months before we're kicked out into the cold." Graham sighed and shook his head. He gestured at his companions' untouched plates. "Nothing left to do but eat, rehearse, and pray the CEO gets a heart attack while screwing his mistress any time between now and two months hence."

The two reluctantly picked up their forks and started eating. The atmosphere was depressing as hell, and despite his reticence, Graham was wracking his brain for something, anything, to lighten the mood. 

It was a good thing Lee decided to break the silence, because he couldn't fucking come up with anything. "Don't tell the others yet. Two months is a long time, something might still come up."

He nodded. "Let's give it two, three weeks before the deadline. I'll have a talk with Mark, maybe beg a few old school chums for a favour or two. We'll see."

They finished the meal in relative peace, with Lee making small talk, and Richard playing along. He wished that phone call hadn't arrived while Richard was there, or that he'd kept his mouth shut and just called Lee tomorrow. The regret the actor must be feeling right now, leaving the Jackson for a play that wouldn't even see the light of day. 

Nothing to be done about it now. If things went completely downhill, he'd pay Mark another visit and try to get Richard his old job back, at least. 

After washing up, they went back to the living room to do Richard's notes. It was running late, as Richard pointed out, offering to just do them at the Walsh on Monday, but Graham bid him to sit back down and assured him there wasn't much to discuss as he'd been doing a stellar job so far. 

He'd asked Lee a week ago to make his own set of notes for Richard if he had any. What he was handed was a small stack of index cards, brightly-coloured, ruled, numbered, and everything. He fell silent and stared at it for a minute. "Amazing. I haven't seen cards like these since my A-levels."

"Don't start," Lee said. 

"How very high school production of you." He laughed at the childish way Lee scrunched his face. Even Richard couldn't help a snicker at his expense. "All right," he said, taking a deep breath and referring to the back of his script and his forest of scrawls. "Act 1, 2: 'How can you stand there,' I think it throws Luke off a little when you drop eye contact here. Can you maintain that until his cue?"

"Yeah." Richard had retrieved his notebook beforehand and dutifully marked it down. 

"Good. 1, 5: you consistently head downstage before Cabrera's entrance." 

Graham waited. Richard waited as well, then appeared confused. "...Yes?"

" _Why_ do you do that? We reviewed this blocking two weeks ago."

"Um..." Richard looked towards Lee. 

"I can't light him properly upstage left," Lee said, sounding put-upon. "Which you'd know if you ever bothered to read my rehearsal notes -"

Graham huffed and waved his hand dismissively. "Your rehearsal notes are unreadable."

"They're like eight, nine lines a day!"

"Yes, and you _always_ start them off with mind-numbing technical jargon. How was I supposed to know there was actually something important in there?"

"You...!" Lee bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay. I will work on my notes."

"Good lad." He returned his attention to Richard, who, judging from his smile, they'd been inadvertently entertaining. Graham brought the stack of notes to the fore, peering at the first one. "Now, let's see...ah, I meant to tell you this yesterday, good thing Lee noticed: your spiel after Lara's 'Under the circumstances' line has an endearing quality to the way you deliver it. Keep that up. I've heard you try to vary it a few times recently, but it doesn't sound quite as memorable."

After Richard had taken a few seconds to jot that down and nodded, he moved on to the next card. "All right. Next: 'What does ha...'"

_What does having a muse feel like?_

A sudden coldness numbed his fingers. He dry-swallowed and glared at his co-director, who had the temerity to be draped over his couch beside Richard, looking incredibly smug. "I could have read that out loud." 

"I'm disappointed that you didn't," countered Lee, with an impish grin. 

He glared, ignored Richard's puzzled glance, and shoved the card to the back of the pile. The next one read: _Thought I'd ask. You've been doing some of your best work recently._

"Are there _any_ actual notes for Richard in here?"

_He asks after you sometimes._

Lee laughed at him. "Yes. Keep going. You'll find them eventually."

_He worries when you don't go for a bite to eat with me._

"You have terrible handwriting, by the way," Graham muttered.

_You should thank him for putting up with all the script changes. I just learned from Eva that he hates that, but he hasn't complained._

He glanced up at Richard - attentive, quiet Richard - who was looking at him with mild concern. Frowning, he flipped through the cards again and removed the cheeky ones from the narrow pile. To the fireplace with those later tonight. "To answer your question: none of your goddamn business."

He didn't quite like Lee's sympathetic smile. "That bad, huh?" 

Graham didn't grace that with an answer and flipped over to the next card. _Actual_ notes. Thank God.


	6. Chapter 6

They did find someone, three days later. Aidan Turner was the friend Dean was bringing in, an old acquaintance from the music indie scene, front man of a band Graham couldn't pronounce, and eager enough to do the job. Any job. His response to Graham's inquiry if he'd like to read for Matheson was "Yeahyeahyeah." Similarly, his response to being asked to read for Rippler was "Yeahyeahyeah. No prob. What's he like?"

They also welcomed John Callen, who had a rather impressive list of performances under his belt, and wouldn't have been caught dead in such a financially-strapped production if he hadn't been a family friend of the O'Gormans. A pleasant man overall, and his scepticism diminished considerably after he'd met Graham, learnt of his history working for the Jackson, and read a good portion of the script. 

On another note, they lost five actors. How or when, Graham didn't know. He addressed this in front of the cast in the morning of rehearsal, with a gentle reminder that their contracts specifically stated that the directors were to be notified two weeks in advance. Thankfully, no one else left since, although he did detect a hint of tension among the younger cast. 

Adam confirmed his suspicions a couple of days later. "Carter's producing 'Blithe Spirit'."

"Dammit." The young actor's wince of sympathy did little to settle his nerves. "How many are auditioning? Two, three...?"

" _Definitely_ more than three."

Graham cursed under his breath. 

"Word has it that the pay's run-of-the-mill, if that makes you feel any better."

"No, it really doesn't. _Any_ pay is better than no pay, but thank you for trying."

His phone call to Mark didn't go very well, either - he'd been hoping for a bit of sympathy that might lead to the borrowing of the 200-seater workshop stage beside the Jackson, but Mark was in a mood, and Mr. Warner had apparently given him a firm talking-to with regard to his "excess of good nature" and Graham running away with two of his actors. Ringing up two other theatre associates had proved equally fruitless. Desperation tempted him to call three relatives and a distant friend he hadn't bothered in three years, but not just any big open space would do, really - they needed a proper stage. The three-day final performance was going to be at the Boyens, which was a huge 1,200-seater theatre. They were already going to make several adjustments from the Walsh as it was. Some of his cast hadn't even set foot in something that large before, much less performed in it.

The future was very bleak indeed, but he could forget about it sometimes, when rehearsals were underway. There had been a subtle current of electricity in the air since Richard first took centre stage, far beyond the collective sigh of relief that this thing was finally going to get done. Somehow, Richard - with his remarkable performances and his note-taking and his obscenely early mornings and his not-quite-method way of preparing - had set the bar rather high for the rest, and it felt as if people were stepping up their game alongside him. Even Adam had started coming in regularly now, and that lad used to have _every_ excuse at the ready just to skip one day of having to attend anything. 

Yes, there was always Westmore to look forward to. It was rather fortunate, perhaps, that despite the brewing storm clouds hovering over his production, Graham could still come to work every morning and leave with his heart brimming with ideas and changes that he couldn't wait to try out the day after. 

One such night found him with a half-formed thought that refused to be ignored. After a late meeting with electrics and stage management, he commandeered the outdated theatre laptop and jotted down what he could, with the intention of continuing everything once he got home.

That had been several hours ago. It only occurred to him that he'd been at it for the entire night when he heard soft knocking on his office door, prior to Richard cautiously peeking in. "...Did you sleep?" he was asked, with Richard's tone conveying both worry and a hint of marvel.

They were both aware that Graham would normally have his face firmly planted in a pillow at this hour. "Did _you_?" he asked instead. "You can't have got enough rest, leaving at twelve and coming back here at five in the morning."

After closing the door behind him, Richard cocked his head to the side. "How did you know I went home at twelve? You were in a meeting."

"Timetable," Graham explained, with an offhand wave towards the lobby. That, and from watching. No need to add a point to his creep meter, however. He removed his glasses, threw the pair onto his desk, and rubbed eyes he hadn't noticed were dry and tired. "Come in, sit. Since you're here, you might as well have a look at this."

It was only while printing it out that he realised how _long_ it had become. He was going to have to axe some of the pages before his co-director could get on his case about the pacing issues.

"First draft," Graham explained while Richard quietly read. "Using a hacksaw on it this weekend to polish it up, but I'd like your thoughts on it now." He found himself too tired to observe the man closely and had a bit of a battle just keeping his eyes open for a while. Exhaustion always felt like a sack of bricks once he started to notice it.

"You have a few of my mannerisms in here."

Richard's voice drove some of the cobwebs of sleep away. He'd almost drifted off, Graham was embarrassed to realise. "Some. I made edits throughout, actually. Little tweaks here and there. I'm sure the cast will be _thrilled_."

"Script changes are always hard," was Richard's noncommittal response. Alluding without being contentious - very much like Westmore. These days, he was starting to question where one ended and the other began, and wondering whether or not this was a good thing.

He looked at Richard through the dim glow of the laptop screen; observed the bowed shoulders, the docile angle his head was turned, and how that made his throat look especially vulnerable. "Playing Westmore scares you on some level, doesn't it?"

No replies - not even a nod. Graham didn't really need one. As expressive as his voice was, the man's silences could communicate more sometimes, even when he didn't want them to. 

"Why?" he persisted, curious and with a hint of the voice he used when he was ordering actors out on the stage. Richard always responded well to that.

Still, it took the other man some time to reply. "There's a reason I'm a _character_ actor."

"And Westmore isn't a character?"

"He feels less like one with every new version of the script you hand out."

_Fair enough_. Graham stroked his bearded chin - getting rather thick there, these days. He was long due for a shave. "Is this a problem? Playing yourself on stage."

It was unfair, he knew, to brush some inflection in his tone, one hinting of disappointment should Richard's answer fall two inches close to "yes." 

"It's...difficult." Still not meeting his eyes, Richard turned the page. "Not really a problem."

_Of course not,_ Graham thought, a little unkindly. God forbid something should break before the other man could admit to being pushed too hard. 

Not that he had anything to worry about. Graham was many things, but an overbearing director wasn't one of them. He was learning, through little pushes and nudges, what Richard's limits were - they were refreshingly wide, but they were there. He could see them, even if, sometimes, he had a feeling Richard could not. 

And they were getting more and more prominent the closer they were to rehearsing Act 2, Scene 3.

Memories of the first table reading would resurface now and then - the uncharacteristic little pauses Richard had made, the way he couldn't stop picking at his nails. He hadn't just imagined the wide-eyed, grateful expression on the actor's face when he'd called for five. Lee had noticed it, too.

The script was returned to him. "A bit too long for a pre-climactic scene, isn't it?" Richard said.

"I'll prune it down this weekend. Otherwise...?"

"Otherwise...I think you finally have a finished, solid, well-written play." The glowing words were accompanied with a playful smirk. "Sans title, of course."

"My brain's too fried to come up with one today. Maybe tomorrow. Or never, considering what awaits us." He closed his eyes and tried to rub some of the sleep and exhaustion away. 

"You've been so grim since Saturday."

"Have I?" Graham frowned and mentally reviewed the past few days. "I suppose I have been."

"Are things that hopeless, then?" Richard asked. (He'd licked his lower lip prior to speaking. That was far more distracting than Graham thought possible.)

"Things...could be better," he simply said, biting back his longer reply of how his bank loans were all maxed out, how Hugo was impervious to begging, how none of his contacts were pulling through, and how they were losing actors to a nearby production. He was about to tell Richard not to worry about it any further, but the actor's attention was currently occupied with finding something in his shoulder bag.

A moment later, an impressive book was placed on his desk, cover title facing him. _A History of Theatre, 1960-1990_.

"I've earmarked and highlighted a few paragraphs," Richard said, while all Graham could do was stare at the massive tome, every inch of him crawling at the very thought of having to read it. "I'm not sure if it helps, but it might be relevant to what we're facing."

He gingerly flipped to the earmarked page. A few paragraphs were highlighted in bright yellow. "...Did you borrow this from the theatre library?"

His question was met with a quizzical tilt of Richard's head. "No, that's my copy."

_'Course it is._ Graham stomped on the urge to roll his eyes and read the indicated passages. 

A few sentences in, and it was clear that the subject was Christopher Lee's "A Season for Harlequins," produced in 1977. It was created only two years after the Boyens Competition was born, and, as a contender, it had failed. Miserably. Graham continued down the highlighted path, lost patience, and said, "I'm aware of the story. Maybe you can just tell me what -"

"Wait. Here..." Richard flipped the page and pointed to the lowest paragraph.

The story went on to detail how Mr. Lee, confident in his play's success, had staged a private viewing of a thirty-minute excerpt performance for esteemed critics and celebrities. Nothing more than a publicity stunt, at the time - everyone was staging their own little gimmicks here and there, before it became _de rigueur_ to keep mum and treat the contest as a big reveal. His plan backfired, however: the excerpt had been ill-picked, so much so that the audience had trouble contextualizing the chosen portion and felt completely disconnected from the scene. The critics feasted on how terrible it was, and people felt the failed promotion played a great part in its loss.

"Hmm. I see." The huge amount of highlighted text made sense now. He went back and skimmed through the parts he'd skipped. 

He heard more than saw Richard shift in his seat. "I know it wasn't - um. One of his best..."

That made Graham pause and throw the younger man a pointed look. "You're allowed to say it was absolute shit."

"I haven't read the whole script, so I can't really say one way or the other."

"I have. It was shit. The man's brilliant, but _that_ play was not a good debut." Returning his attention to the book, Graham remained silent until he had finished reading about the publicity stunt from hell. "You think we should do something similar."

"I do." There was no trace of dissembling in Richard's tone now. "I looked up the rules. They haven't changed since then, so it should still be allowed."

Graham leaned back in his chair, stroking his chin and drawing a deep breath. "Hasn't been attempted since 1977." No wonder, really, since the one person who had tried it had tanked harder than a capsized submarine. It took Christopher Lee several years before he gathered the courage to produce another play after that. 

Still, though...the timing was ideal, and oh so very tempting. The other competitors were taking their cues from McKellen's media round and heading for the NDA route. Complete silence until curtain call. Nothing past a blurb or two was being printed about any of the plays, and the theatre critics were starving for something to sink their teeth into. 

He mentioned as much to Richard, who seemed to brighten at his show of interest in the venture. 

"It's risky," Richard said in agreement, "but if it works, the publicity could lead to financial backing."

_Financial backing._ Graham made a low, unhappy sound at the back of his throat. That meant sponsors. Probably _commercial_ sponsors. There was a joke in here somewhere about coming full circle and hapless, idealistic directors.

He wasn't sure what expression he was wearing, but Richard seemed amused enough by it. "To be honest, I never thought the Jackson's as bad as you make it out to be."

Graham gave a soft snort. "Ignorance is bliss, and all that." He closed the book and nudged it back towards its owner. "I need to give this some more thought, see what Lee thinks about it later today."

"Sure." Book sequestered, Richard said, with a wry grin, "At the very least, we wouldn't be sitting on our hands, waiting for Mr. Weaving to kick us out."

Graham couldn't really argue with that. 

 

Late that afternoon, he interrupted the scene rehearsal to take Lee aside and apprise him of his earlier conversation with Richard. At first, his co-director appeared sceptical - arms folded, mouth curved in a deep frown. At one point, his ever expressive eyebrows rose high, and he stalled Graham's story with a held-up finger.

"Wait, no, that's perfect...there's...hold on a second..." Lee ran off. Graham was left hanging for a good minute before he returned, with a smiling - but puzzled - Dean in tow. 

"Dean, can you repeat what you were telling me two days ago?"

His question was met with a blank stare. "Two days ago?" The actor hesitantly asked. "About the pot?"

The colour drained from Lee's face. "...No, Dean. Not about the pot."

"'Cause you said I can't bring my bong here, so I thought you'd be dropping by at -"

"The crowd thing!" Lee interjected. "The one you did for Aidan's band."

"Oh! Why didn't you say so? So, you have a project, right..."

Five minutes later, Graham had a rough inkling about what crowdfunding was. Dean had handed his phone to him, the browser opened to several pages of other people's startups and projects. Mostly bands and video games, but two were theatre-related, at least. Though one didn't seem to be doing well.

The actor shrugged when he pointed the latter out. "A lot of projects just sink. It's hard to tell. Depends on how good the material is, how appealing it is to people, how quickly you can get the word out..."

Graham frowned at the screen. "These projects all have three, six months before expiry."

"That's pretty standard, yeah," Dean said with a nod. "Need time for people to learn about -"

"Would one month be doable?"

The answering wince wasn't very encouraging. "Maybe? It's not against the rules, but it's very short notice. Might not be enough time to build up interest."

"That could be the least of our worries," Lee interjected. "Word gets out that a Boyens competitor is staging an excerpt preview -"

"A what now?" Dean asked, glancing from one man to the other. 

"- could get enough press for this to work. At the very least, we could gather enough funds so we can keep going 'til opening."

"Uh..." They both looked at Dean, who was scratching his head. "Not really sure what you two are on about, but that's not how this works."

"Meaning...?" Graham asked, with a thread of impatience. A coil of dread was already knotting his stomach.

"You set a funding goal, yeah? The amount you need to make this happen." Dean took his phone back and swiped through a few pages. He found whatever he was looking for and handed it to Graham, browser opened to a different page. "If the contributions you get don't meet the goal, say you get $9,000 instead of $10,000, no one gets charged."

"We get _nothing_?" The screen displayed a simplified FAQ page that he started thumbing through. 

Lee made a worried sound. "That complicates things. Dean brought it up for Tami's costumes and set props. The risk that we won't get any funding at all is bigger the larger the amount we ask for."

The page was clear enough - the site employed an "all-or-nothing" policy among creators. Perhaps to dissuade others from abusing the service or to create an atmosphere of urgency. Graham muttered an unhappy curse and handed the phone back.

"There are other sites," Dean said, with an awkward smile at the frustration both directors were currently exuding, "where you _can_ keep what's been donated regardless, but they don't enjoy the same accessibility as this one does. And this is also the only one I've worked with."

"What's to stop us from doing this on our own and setting up a donation page?" Graham asked.

"Then you'll have to worry about all the other stuff that this site already does for you. Different methods of payment, international laws, fees, taxes..."

"Oh, _Christ_." Graham attempted to massage away a blooming headache. "Dean, can we just trust you to handle this for us?" 

"Sure. Gonna need to pick your brain about the details, though. And what I can set up as Rewards."

"I...don't even know what that is. But sure, we'll go over it tonight. Please inform the others we're having a cast and crew meeting tomorrow. Attendance is mandatory."

"First time for everything," Dean said, with a cheeky grin. 

After Dean's departure, Graham felt some of the weight on his chest lifting - this could work. It could _still_ work. He glanced at Lee, and found the same relief echoed on his colleague's face. 

"Hail Mary?" Lee teased, with a gentle smile.

"Hail Mary," he echoed in agreement. "The Walsh is small, but it's not exactly inexpensive. We're going to have to match what that CEO offered Hugo if he's going to let us stay. What are these?"

"Rehearsal notes." A single page with one line of chicken scribble under "Notes" had been thrust into Graham's hand. He peered suspiciously at it. "I'll go find Tami and my guys, they left earlier to clean out some molds."

"All right." 

Lee had barely taken three steps when Graham called his name again. After he was sure that the younger man's attention was focused on him, he wore the most grave expression he could manage and said, "Do I need to have a conversation with your father about drugs?"

Lee's wide eyes, and, after, the way his eyebrows flatlined over an unimpressed face, left Graham snickering. "Don't you dare..."

"Just making sure. His call's due in three days, you know."

"You're such an ass. I've caught you high as a kite enough times, outside of work."

"Ah, guilty." He grinned at the perplexed look Lee wore. Times like this, he thought he could understand some of the motivations behind James Roy Pace's monthly calls. "Just make sure Dean gives you the good stuff and there's someone to escort you home. Or just sleep over."

Lee hardly looked reassured. He made an aborted step to leave, but spun back to face Graham. "...Just so we're clear, you're not telling my dad?" 

"I was teasing. I'm not that desperate for entertainment yet." Graham chuckled at the expression of pure relief on Lee's face. "Brace yourself, though - this cast meeting isn't going to be pretty."

He was about to follow the path Dean had taken to do a quick headcount of their cast, when he remembered he was still holding a piece of paper. Smoothing it out, he read:

_John. Wire. Trip lots. LX cue 6 sometimes go bzzt bzzt. Notes good? Director read now?_

_Well._ Graham heaved a loud sigh. He supposed he deserved that.


	7. Action to the Word; Word to the Action

_"The Walsh is lost. Mr. Weaving has decided to accept a sizable rent of the theatre, and we, like poor naked wretches, are left houseless in a pitiless storm. Obviously, we have neither the funds nor the means to counter this offer. At least, not yet._

_Within four weeks, we will be taking a page from Mr. Christopher Lee's book and staging a fifty-five-minute excerpt of the play. I know this is controversial. Every theatre student, actor, director, writer, and critic in the region knows the horrible story - and if they don't, then they will soon enough. We predict that this attempt will gather us quite a bit of attention - some positive, some not so much - and all that attention, we will try to utilise into gathering financial support._

_Now, due to the nature of this venture, we shall have a modified script. I know, I know. Stop moaning. Act 2, Scene 1, specifically, will be less 'hit-the-ground-running' and contain more exposition so we can convey a portion of the tone and urgency from Act 1. We'll have three dress rehearsals - I know that's too few, but it's only nine scenes and there isn't any time for more - and the opening will be on October 22. In attendance, should the winds blow favourably in our direction, will be industry critics, journalists, fellow writers, directors, and whichever celebrity decides we're worth their time. You know. No pressure._

_I know some of you won't be joining us for this journey, and that's all right. If you need me to write you a reference, a letter of recommendation, call your teacher, or whatever else, please see me in my office._

_Those of you who_ will _be staying, however, insane people that you are - thank you. This has been a difficult undertaking, and it doesn't look like it's about to get easier any time soon. A new contract is being drafted and will require signing by the end of the week. Who knows - by the end of all this, maybe we'll be able to pay you."_

Three actors left that day. At week's end, they bid farewell to six more.

 

"You're gonna fall."

"I'm not going to fall."

"You're gonna fall."

"I'm not going to - Lee..." Graham sighed and adjusted his flimsy grip on the third platform's balustrade. The bulky, heavy sculpture he was holding in place with one hand, just about an arm's reach above his head, felt more and more unwieldy by the second. Lee's nattering wasn't helping, either.

"I'm just saying. That tiny stool was not built to support a man of your w - uh...build."

He threw a narrow glare at the sweet-faced rapscallion. "...You were going to say 'weight.'"

"No, I wasn't."

" _Where's_ Tami?" He glanced over his shoulder, hoping to catch sight of their resident artisan, but that single move nearly made him lose his footing. He hoped the balustrade he was clinging to was secure. God knew what it was even made of - definitely not wood. "She said she was coming back with some nails and glue. That must have been fifteen minutes ago."

Lee made a thoughtful, humming sound in his throat. "Did you happen to piss her off recently?"

Graham thought for a moment. He bowed his head in defeat. "...Shit."

"Yeah. You should get down from there. Before...you know. You fall."

" _Shit._ " With a bit of assistance, he gingerly stepped down from the tall, narrow, wobbly stool. "I told her I don't have a budget for props anymore, I don't know what she wants from me."

"We _did_ just dump the staging of 2, 4 on her. And the actors keep breaking things." Lee paused and gave him an uncertain look, one that often meant he was about to suggest something Graham wasn't going to like. "I could try taking out another loan..."

" _No._ She'll manage, she always does. Though we should probably stop asking what the props are made of - she threatened to skin and pulverize one of the interns when the paste ran out the other day." Despite Tami's complaints regarding how understaffed and underfunded she was, the set designs were coming along well. _They could be better_ , of course, but considering how much money he'd given her and what she'd been able to produce, he wasn't about to start nitpicking.

A glance back at Lee showed the younger man with his hands in his pockets, biting his lower lip. "Have you talked to him yet?"

Graham sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. "I was hoping to save that particular 'joy' for this weekend, it being Friday and all."

"I know he sounded weird about the scene during the table readings, but I didn't think...I thought I was reading too much into it." 

As did most people present, Graham could imagine. The first table reading had been a little rough for Act 2, Scene 3, although since it was simply a light survey of the script, Richard's stumbling through the dialogue had gone unremarked. The consecutive ones had been more uncomfortable, with the actor just getting through the lines rather than acting them out. Earlier that afternoon had been their first attempt at a proper stage rehearsal of Act 2's Scenes 1 to 3, and while Richard had dropped a few phrases here and there in past rehearsals, he'd never before had a complete mental block on stage.

Guilt lay heavy in the pit of Graham's stomach. Today had been designated for his meeting with Hugo, but that had gone surprisingly well and had ended early at noon. He'd had the cast called back in, hoping to get in some rehearsal time for Act 2, Scenes 1 and 2, intending to shelve 3 for the weekend so he could help Richard sort out his feelings during their Saturday notes. But Tami wanted a props durability test for 3, and Lee needed to re-check the blocking and adjusted rail cues, and there was Graham in the middle, unable to think of a good excuse not to let the actors proceed to the next part. 

The guilt came from somewhere else, however, the source of which he'd be hard-pressed to admit out loud - that he had been curious, to a degree, to see whether Richard would either bend or break.

He had seen the brief flash of - fright? Uncertainty? - in Richard's eyes, followed by a carefully-crafted neutral expression when he'd noticed he was being observed. But when Lee had asked whether it was all right to rehearse more now or if he wanted to save that for Monday, Graham had agreed to the former. 

"I'll talk to him," he muttered. 

"Okay," Lee said, watching him closely. "Do you want me there on Saturday?"

"Well..." While the two seemed to have developed their own brand of friendship, he doubted Richard would have told Lee much about the origins of Scene 3. So far, his co-director hadn't given any indication that he thought there was anything unusual about it compared to the others. "Best if I do it alone," he replied. "Don't want him to think he's being ganged up on."

"Okay. You know him better. I'll try to handle the Evangeline and Luke situation, in the meanwhile." 

Graham stopped walking. With trepidation, he slowly asked, "What 'Evangeline and Luke situation'?"

"...Adam hasn't told you yet." Lee grimaced and awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "From what I've heard, Evangeline's pissed off, and Luke may have just gotten his heart broken. I don't really know the details."

"Oh, God." Maybe not exactly the way Graham had predicted that particular matchup to go, but the news was just as upsetting. "Is either one of them leaving? The Glance is in two weeks, and we are _leaking_ actors!"

"It'll be fine. Maybe." Lee gave a helpless shrug. "None of this has affected their performance yet. I just thought I'd take some preventive measures."

Graham sighed. "Tell me if they come to their senses, or if we're just royally screwed come Monday, won't you? This play is going to be the death of us."

"I will. Let me know how it goes with Richard."

 

Graham's bed hardly looked slept in these days. The closer they got to the dreaded date, the more valuable his time became, and the less opportunities he had for a proper rest. Saturday morning was spent over the phone, finalizing interview dates and saying 'yes' to all the things Dean wanted to add to their Kickstarter page. (He got lost after the sixth behind-the-scenes thing Dean wanted permission for. After agreeing to write a short paragraph on the production, he just gave the young man free license to bring his camcorder and go to town with it, providing none of it showed anything beyond Act 2, Scenes 1 to 9.)

Sunday afternoon to Wednesday morning, he was scheduled for a media round, nearly on the heels of McKellen's public appearance, but with far more scrutiny and scepticism from the masses. Yesterday, he'd rung up Sylvester McCoy - local theatre critic and close friend of McKellen's - talked through the niceties, and informed him in a poorly-disguised, off-hand manner of what he had planned on October 22. True to Sylvester McCoy form, the Saturday morning edition of the local paper had a lengthy column in their Entertainment section about a certain budget-impaired play for the upcoming Boyens Competition, how it planned to alleviate itself of said impairment, and a very thorough account of what had happened to a similar attempt back in the 70's and why this was generally considered to be a Very Bad Idea.

At the bottom, the column read: _"Watch this space on Monday for critically-acclaimed director Ian McKellen's insight and predictions regarding this most recent controversy."_ Graham gave a soft snort and binned the paper afterwards.

A mere hour after reading McCoy's column, Graham was swamped with calls from reporters hoping to get thirty minutes (or so they said - in his experience, it was never _just_ thirty minutes) of his time.

He'd just got off the line with Dean when his doorbell rang right on the dot, at 1 p.m. Richard took one look at him and said, cautiously, "...Bad time?"

"Busy morning. Come in." Richard passed him in the doorway, all mussed hair and droopy eyelids. "You didn't walk here, did you?"

Richard's answer came with a faint smile. "Couldn't sleep."

The living room was prepared - two copies of the script on the coffee table, in front of the seats along with empty glasses and a pitcher of iced water. Richard's eyes swept through the room, seeming to take it all in with a measure of wariness.

Graham left him alone while he closed and locked the front door, then unhooked his landline and shut off his cell phone. He could already feel the tension wafting from the man, as palpable as strong cologne. Before Richard took his usual seat on the couch, he turned to face Graham again, a hand hovering towards him as if trying to remember something. "We were mentioned. On the news," he said, slowly. "Sort of. They named you, though. The early morning show."

"Did they?" Graham replied, nonchalant. "What did they say?"

"Just that you used to work for the Jackson, and that you, uh...don't. Anymore."

Graham chuckled. If the stilted phrasing hadn't been a dead giveaway, Richard's sudden interest in the floor was. "There's nothing those vultures can say that hasn't been said to my face by better people, so there's no need to filter anything. But sweet of you to try."

"Nothing I didn't already know, really. Although...they said you threatened to cut off Mr. McCoy's nose once?"

"I _did_ , among other things, but it was in the middle of an argument...long story. They keep leaving out the part where Sylvester was yelling death and destruction over the entire Walsh." He waved a hand dismissively in the air. "One of those blown-out-of-proportion things, solved with a few drinks in the actor's bar two days later."

"I'd like to hear that story someday." Richard took his usual place on the couch, left-most of the three cushions and closest to his armchair. His back looked rigid, hands moving, as if on impulse, towards the script closest to him, only to withdraw. 

"Relax," Graham said, and watched with resentment as his request achieved the exact opposite. He took his place in the armchair and put on the pair of reading spectacles he'd left hanging on his collar. "It's all Act 2, Scene 3 today. All right?"

"I figured."

"Good. Light reading first -"

"I know the lines."

Graham looked up from the script with a humourless smile. "Indulge me." 

The read-through was flawless. As if to prove his point, Richard barely looked at the script. Graham took a short break, poured them a glass of water each, and bid Richard drink before they started again.

"Westmore, now." He waited until the other man settled back on the couch and tried his best to relax. He didn't seem to succeed much. "Ready?"

Richard nodded.

Acted out, the scene was essentially a confrontation between Westmore and Rippler, and, on a grander scale, between Westmore and his father - a verbal clashing of ideals that built to a crescendo before transitioning into the more docile, pre-climactic Scene 4. Richard did well a fourth of the way in, exuding a thrilling, determined energy that Graham had seen Aidan play off of during rehearsals. It was Westmore's voice he heard. Every time his eyes would leave the page, it would be Westmore looking back at him.

Until, that is, he first spoke the father's lines. 

In front of his very eyes, Westmore stuttered, fell silent, and, after a while, faded as Richard's shoulders slumped. 

"Sorry," Richard said and bent forward, elbows braced on his knees, both hands covering his face. His voice came out muffled. "I practised this with Eva last night - thought I had it." 

Graham removed his glasses and hung them on his collar again. Gently, he said, "Talk to me. What, exactly, is holding you back?"

The wait became strained, then awkward. Richard had drawn breath as if to reply, but the seconds passed by and his voice remained absent.

"This close to the Glance...it's too late to change anything."

He uncovered his face, at least, one hand rising to run through the uncombed fringe on his forehead. "I'm not asking you to."

Graham waited another minute before he said, with studious calm, "I want to help you, but I need to know more about what's troubling you."

"I'm not sure where to start...it's going to sound trite." At length, Richard fell back on the couch with a deep sigh, brows drawn and tense, looking more tired now than when he had come in. "When I was young, I fell in the neighbour's pool," he began, wearing the same constructed, neutral facade Graham often saw during the table readings for this very scene. "I think I was six, maybe seven. I was pushing a toy trolley, lost my footing, and it dragged me under. I still remember that clearly - not the date, or the people who pulled me up. The sinking. Needing air, and breathing in water. The smell, the cold. Every detail, whenever I let myself - like it happened moments ago.

"I get like that with this scene. I wasn't as young, but I was just as naive, I think. Here, you have Westmore saying words I wish I had. Words I can't say even now, if my father were still alive and standing in this room. I _know_ the lines, I memorized them on day one, but once the scene starts, Aidan lets himself get thrown out, John starts addressing me, things escalate, and I'd..." He laughed, a self-deprecating sound that deepened Graham's frown. "It's silly, but I'd smell his aftershave. My father's, not John's. During one of the table readings, I thought I heard my brother's voice telling me that everything was my fault." 

"Thought you were on speaking terms with him."

Richard looked at him, briefly. "Just this year. We got to talking when he asked for help..." He gave a one-shouldered, uncaring shrug. "Not that it mattered. I couldn't even give him that."

The nephew, Graham remembered, and felt something in him tighten. 

Richard looked away, his right hand brushing across his upper lip. "I did it last night with Eva," he repeated. "I could get through the scene by rote...I won't be in the moment, but it's better than nothing."

_By rote._ Like an exercise regimen to push through. The only thing preventing Graham from mentioning as much was the crippling dissatisfaction he could hear in Richard's own voice.

'Better than nothing,' indeed. At least it wasn't quite the insurmountable impasse he'd inwardly feared. "I'm not going to tell you I can fix this," he said, when it became evident that Richard wasn't about to break the silence again. "I'm no psychologist. I'm _definitely_ not going to tell you to pretend I'm your father like some half-assed attempt at therapy just so you can do my damn play." Richard cracked a smile at that. "What I _can_ do is promise you two things: one, that we can keep working on this for the entire weekend if you're up for it. Never mind what I have scheduled. Just say the word, and today and tomorrow are yours. Monday too, if you need it. You can spend the next two nights here if you like. No breaks unless you want them."

If this were any other actor, that might not have sounded very appealing in general, but Graham was intimately familiar with how Richard worked by now. Two nights straight working through the difficulties on this single, problematic scene felt par for the course, and judging from the spark of hope his suggestion caused in Richard's dismal expression, it seemed like it could be a good call. At the very least, it wasn't unwelcome.

Graham noticed with some interest that Richard had started to pick at his nails again, quite unconsciously, between his spread legs. 

"If you can afford to lose a Sunday...I think I might have to." For a split second, he thought Richard was about to apologise - something he did often whenever he stayed an hour or two longer than he thought appropriate at Graham's house. It was starting to get annoying, and Graham was quite close to taking it personally. Instead, he asked: "What's the second one?"

"If, by the end of Monday's rehearsal, you still can't get through this scene without bursting a blood vessel, I'm axing it."

Graham carefully watched as Richard frowned at him, those arched brows drawn in confusion. _Let's ease some of that pressure, shall we,_ he thought, hoping to whatever deity was listening out there that this weekend wouldn't turn him into a liar. Trust and honesty were key to ensuring that the company functioned as a coordinated entity, he felt - no, _believed_ \- but sometimes...sometimes, certain actions were just necessary.

Richard was unlike any other actor he'd had to handle before. Like with most things rare and unfamiliar, Graham could only go by instinct and feel. 

"You mean...cut it completely?" Richard's eyes widened when Graham gave a swift nod. "Are you mad? Do you want _more_ actors to quit? You have no idea how close Luke was to throwing the script in your face yesterday."

" _Luke_?" Graham asked, eyebrow raised. "Didn't I just tell him to use 'flock' instead of 'congregation'?"

Richard's expression turned dry. "Yes. Two days after you rewrote his whole Scene 1 exit speech. Which was three days _after_ you rearranged his Act 2 cues. Which was -"

"I get it, I get it. You let me worry about Luke. Or Adam, or Lee, or anyone else you're thinking of right now. Most of the people left in the company - we've been through tough times before." 

"Worse than this?" Richard asked, sceptical.

"Pretty close."

If anything, that only seemed to increase the other man's misgivings. "Earlier, you said it was too late to change anything," he said, gaze askance and voice challenging.

Graham sighed and leaned forward, meeting Richard's stare head-on. "Look, Richard - I like Scene 3. As much as possible, I'd like it untouched. But it won't be the end of the world if this weekend doesn't go well and we have to explore removing it from the script altogether. So I don't want you to think about that. Today and tomorrow, we concentrate on making this scene work. If it doesn't, we figure out what to do from there. All right?" 

He waited. Richard dropped his gaze and scratched his thigh.

"Richard?"

It took a while, but Richard eventually replied with a nod.

"Good." He leaned back and rubbed a developing knot of tension near his nape. God, it was going to be a long day. "Now, is there anything you need to settle in overnight?"

"Not really. I could commute back, but if you can spare an extra toothbrush, towel, change of clothes, and don't mind me using your bathroom, I'm good to go."

Huh. Sharing a living space with Evangeline, he sort of assumed the man would be more high maintenance than that, for some reason. He filed away this pleasant, minor detail and smiled. "Of course."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and for the kind words so far. By necessity, I have to enter a sort of mini-hiatus for this fic, until I can iron out a snag I've hit in the story in later chapters, since it might affect the chapters I haven't posted yet. Sorry for this, and thank you for your patience.


	8. Chapter 8

Denying people was fun, it pleased Graham to note, so long as you weren't on the business end of it. Three e-mails and a phone call moved four interviews to Wednesday instead of later that morning. _Very_ accommodating people. None of them would even entertain the idea of cancelling.

A rerun of the evening news was playing on his telly, the volume lowered to accommodate the sleeping man just a floor below. The entertainment section showcased a brief summary of this year's contenders for the Boyens Competition, with a prominent mention of a "struggling" play that decided to turn to crowdfunding for its lifeblood. 

_"The theatre piece is helmed by writer and creative director Graham McTavish, best known for his 1992 original play 'Letters From The Yellow Chair'. After working at the Jackson Theatre for five years, he left the spotlight to pursue original work under Hugo Weaving's employ at the Walsh Theatre. Despite the surprising career change, his entry for this year's National Boyens Competition is the first original play he's publicized since his 90s debut. Overall, the..."_

There it was: his whole career in three pathetic sentences. 

His entire Sunday was as clear as it could get. 4-something a.m. and he was tired, absurdly so, but his body still vibrated from the emotionally-charged carnival ride he'd unwittingly hopped onto. Restless energy he didn't know how to dissipate. He couldn't shake the impression that he'd heaped abuse repeatedly upon someone determined, but unable, to bear it, and that ill feeling just kept building as the night wore on. They'd managed a few uninterrupted runs at around 3 a.m., hard-won victories that left Graham feeling wary. Exhaustion might have factored in, he suspected; if so, then they'd achieved absolutely nothing. He would have to make sure Richard was well-rested before they tried again. 

After agreeing to resume at 10, Richard had retired to the couch, leaving Graham to struggle with elusive sleep for a good twenty minutes. 

Upon losing that particular battle, he had decided to check on his guest, if only to reassure himself that the other man was faring better. Not one of his wisest decisions. Unimpeded and unobserved, Graham's normally strong reserve had given in a fraction. A minute's indulgence, he promised himself. Just a minute. Seconds he spent in silent contemplation of the clothes folded on the couch's armrest, of the sweep of long lashes twitching in uneasy sleep, of the black, sleeveless undershirt that probably wasn't meant to be so form-fitting. 

_Weak_ , he chided himself, as he tugged the blanket higher up on a bared arm and tried to think nothing of it. _"And by and by clean starved for a look", like a bloody fucking teenager._

The past 14 hours had been difficult, but also rather intimate in ways he hadn't foreseen. He had tried to keep it professional at first - they both had, but in hindsight, that could only last so long, what with the close quarters and the highly-charged nature of the scenario. Twice, Richard had shut down in front of him, and twice, he'd held the man close. But it was always stop, go, stop, go; rallying and calling for breaks like a conductor to someone else's opus. There had been laughter, torment, and that haunting look in Richard's eyes right before the tears came. In years to come, time would wear away the first two, but not the last, in Graham's memories.

After sending a quick message to Lee, he took his script and laptop, then anchored himself upstairs and set about getting thoroughly distracted for the next few hours. 

 

At 8 a.m., he managed to catch the doorbell on the first ring, and opened the door to usher Lee in. 

Lee's focus, he belatedly realised after closing the door, had found anchor on his sole, unconscious house guest. Not that he could blame him, what with the couch being at the centre of the room, and the man in question looking indecently fetching while sporting a mussed hairdo, with the tips of his fingers just barely visible past the blanket, near his half-parted lips. 

The expression on Lee's face had him quickly analysing the scene from a different perspective - one that was less virtuous and more daytime telly. So maybe one or two things were making the whole thing seem not quite innocent - including the shirt he'd offered Richard to sleep in, one of Graham's pullovers, draped haphazardly over the back of the couch, beside his similarly-abandoned pair of padded jeans. 

"I see you've been busy," Lee said, followed by a suggestive waggling of his eyebrows.

"Do that thing with your eyebrows again."

"No. You like it." His voice lowered, he asked, "Help me settle a bet - top or bottom?"

"Diagonal."

"What?"

"Kidding. To the kitchen with you and your unclean thoughts. Let Richard sleep, we had a late night."

"I'm sure you did. You big, bad, sex ma -"

" _Kitchen_."

 

One would think "So, how did it go last night?" to be a fairly easy question to answer, but it left Graham tapping his fingers on the table, looking for the right words. "You ever seen someone deathly afraid of water repeatedly try to cross the rapids?" he eventually asked. When Lee shook his head, he continued, "Neither have I. It would probably look a lot like last night, though."

"That sounds...bad."

"Could have gone better. The important thing is he can get through it if he has some time to prepare _within_ the scene. Theoretically. We won't really know until after today. I've modified Matheson's lines to make room for it, and speaking of which..." He dragged the script he'd been poring over from the edge of the table, bringing it to the centre. 

"Twenty roles, seven actors?" Lee hazarded before peering at the cast list.

"In total, yes. Fifteen roles, seven actors, more like, for the nine scenes we need." The pages were flipped until he found the two he'd been scribbling a series of character charts on. "So here's an idea - on a scale of one to ten, how upset do you think our lovely skeleton crew will be if -"

"Ten."

Graham frowned. "...I'm not done ye -"

"Ten," Lee repeated, with a forlorn expression. "Graham, _any_ change you ask of them now, so close to an actual stage performance, is going to cause a shitstorm. You know that, right?"

He waved dismissively. "One week isn't that close. Actors take on multiple roles all the time in this business."

"Not everyone in our company is a consummate professional." Lee seemed to put aside his resentment for a second, the furrow between his brows easing as he surmised, "There are at least two names we should try approaching individually first - announcing this to the group might get us egged."

"John and Luke, I'm guessing? If you think that's best." 

"I was thinking more John and Aidan. Why Luke...?"

"Oh, pshaw. Aidan's fine. Virtue of the unwitting first-timer - he thinks anything we throw at him is normal for theatre." Graham rubbed his chin. "I've heard Luke hasn't been handling the script changes as well as we thought...although, to be fair, I've been micro-editing his lines a fair bit. Best not to take anything for granted at this point."

"How about I talk to all three tomorrow before you announce anything?"

"Couldn't hurt." He waited until Lee had finished fiddling with his phone's scheduler. "There's something else..." 

"...What?" Lee asked, wary as a co-director who's had one too many surprises in the past month. 

"I want to give Richard the focus he needs...so I don't want him playing multiple roles. Just Westmore."

Lee gave that a few seconds' thought. "Think the others will understand. Even with doubling or tripling, Richard will still have more dialogue than the rest of them."

"Evangeline's debatable there. Though we should probably give one of the female roles to Adam - Lara and Aveline have that conversation about war in Scene 6. How'd it go with the unforeseen lovers' spat, by the by?"

Lee leaned back, rubbing his face. "Pretty well. Got them into a room with me and didn't let anyone leave until they hashed things out. It's like herding cats in this group."

"How long did it take?"

"Four hours."

"Jesus."

"Yeah." 

They both shared a long, weary sigh.

Graham was about to ask after the state of their electrics, when a familiar figure in a black undershirt and knit boxer shorts came into view at the kitchen's open doorway, one arm sporting a towel, the other raised to place three courteous (and unnecessary) knocks on the frame.

"Sorry for interrupting...Graham, I was wondering if I could...?"

"'Course," he replied, waving him off. "Use anything you want in there. Tea or coffee when you get back?"

"Coffee, please. Thank you." To Lee, he threw a sleepy smile and a small wave. "Morning, Lee."

"Morning."

"Bear in mind," Graham loudly said, just as Richard slipped from view, "we agreed to 10, and we're not starting until it's 10."

Richard's warm, drowsy chuckle echoed from the hallway leading to the bathroom.

Graham had been braced for more playful teasing, but Lee's expression had turned melancholy. "I'm turning green with envy here," he said, then checked himself after he caught a glimpse of Graham's raised eyebrow. "No, I didn't mean _that_ , I mean, well... _this_. Waking up to someone else, sharing the morning, taking turns at the toilet, fixing someone a pot of coffee..."

Graham narrowed his eyes. "I'm hearing a _lot_ of generalizations. So you miss the companionship, but not the companion...?"

"God. That sounds awful, doesn't it?"

"Carter hasn't called?" Graham ventured with an internal wince. Asking after Lee's affairs bordered on unpleasant, mostly because he found his sympathies flying towards the other man involved, a continent away. Entangled with the rest of Lee's mess of a personal life in the States.

"A few weeks ago." Lee rubbed the back of his neck. "He calls, I just...don't pick up."

"Put the man out of his misery. Please." He released a short, uncomfortable laugh. "I feel like I'm party to a messy breakup here."

" _Or_!" Lee said, making a 180-turn back to boyish enthusiasm. "Maybe this is my chance to fool around, live a little. You could be enabling my unexplored Casanova potential. Tell me you wouldn't be proud of that."

Graham laughed. He couldn't help it. "You'd do something stupid like mix up phone numbers. Or use someone else's name during sex." 

"That's so mean. And so specific." 

Their easy banter continued, accompanied by the mild rattling of his ten-year-old kettle and the fainter noise from the shower down the hall. On some level, Graham knew he was hyperaware of the sounds from the other side of his house, that he was tracking Richard's movements when the running water stopped and he moved from one room to the next. Try as he might, his thoughts on whether his guest had everything he needed for the morning kept straying to how his unclothed form might look under a heavy spray, how his hair would fall in short, lovely washes of ink around his head and the nape of his neck, how his pulse might feel under Graham's lips...

The kettle whistled. He cleared his throat, avoiding Lee's curious look, and rose to make coffee for the three of them. "I told him I'd remove Scene 3 if he couldn't get through it," he said, his tone low and guilty. 

That yanked all the gaiety from Lee's face. "We can't do that," he said, wide-eyed and worried.

Graham poured three cups and took his while still standing, leaning against the counter. "I know. But he was obsessing, and I needed something to...well." He shrugged. "Seems to have worked."

"What would you have done if it _hadn't_ worked?"

"I don't know. Try to remove the scene?"

"God, Graham..."

"Operative word being 'try.' Pretty sure I would have let you talk me out of it."

"Risk-taking's all well and good when we have nothing to lose," Lee said, plaintive, "but you need to stop if we're to have _anything_ ready for the stage in a week." 

Graham held up a placating hand. "I know, and you're right. Last gamble. Nothing but the straight and narrow from this point on."

To his credit, his younger colleague didn't look the slightest bit convinced. 

 

Graham regarded the mess of black hair spilled all over his stomach, rising and falling in time with his own breathing. He couldn't recall how they had arrived at that position _precisely_ , but he remembered being too exhausted to remain standing while reading out a line; deciding instead to ingeniously slump on the floor, burnt out. Sleep must have clawed its way in soon after. 

Richard's head was a pleasant weight, though whenever he exhaled too deeply, it felt like part of the other man's cranium was digging into his kidney.

"Damn," he said in a close whisper, "didn't mean to fall asleep on you."

A full minute passed before Richard spoke. He hadn't thought the man was awake. "It's all right. I'm as prepared as I'm ever going to be." 

Graham's hand lightly patted the nearest bare shoulder. He was too tired and overheated for anything more. They were both stripped to their last layers of clothing, him in a thin, white flannel shirt and trousers, and Richard back to his sleeveless black undershirt and a pair of shorts from Graham's own wardrobe. It was _hot_ , far hotter than it should be at 1 a.m., and there was little to counteract the disagreeable temperature aside from open windows and cool beverages.

He was right, of course. The last few scene runs had been fairly smooth. With Matheson's lines extended to give Richard time to steel himself, they'd managed to fine-tune things enough to allow him to be convincing, if not immersed. Keen eyes might be able to spot the differences in performance (a few dreaded names already came to mind, with McCoy spearheading the charge), but compared to Friday's charming little deer-caught-in-headlights routine, this was a far more favourable result.

"I'm sorry this isn't turning out the way you wanted." 

Graham huffed out a small laugh. "I _wanted_ to put up an original play. We're still doing that, last I checked."

"Not if Saturday doesn't go well."

"You're just determined to be depressing now." He released a soft sigh. "Scene 3's _possibly_ the least of my worries, if you can believe that. Lee and I need to make sure no one else bails or we'll be short-manned."

That drew out a chuckle from the other man. Graham was starting to suspect he had a morose sense of humour regarding other people's troubles. "Can I be present when you tell Eva? I just want to see the look on her face. She was saying last Friday how this is the best experience she's ever had working in the theatre."

Hm. Morose it was. "It's not going to be a deal-breaker, is it? 'Cause we're monumentally fucked if she decides to do a runner."

"I wouldn't worry," Richard said, with a finality that made Graham suspicious. "If you didn't lose her to what happened with Luke, I doubt you'd lose her to tripling."

"I don't see how one relates to the other."

"One's more important to her than the other. Besides, she's done it before. _She Stoops to Conquer_ , Canadian theatre, 2002. This time, she'll have the advantage of _not_ being blindsided 48 hours before curtain call."

"Huh." Compared to that, their current predicament did sound far more manageable. "And it's tripling plus an extra. Apart from you and Aidan, I need all hands on deck for the mob scene, including some of Lee's lighting technicians."

Richard laughed, the deep, pleasant sound reverberating straight to Graham's belly. "'Evangeline Lilly: Lara, Dianne, Patricia, and Mob Number 11'," he said, still chuckling. "Glamorous."

"Role of a lifetime, really. Bugger that Westmore fellow, Mob Number 11 will steal the show." He waited until Richard's laughter had faded before combing his fingers lightly through sweat-damp black hair. "You should get some rest. Today's going to be the start of a very long week."

"Is that a not-so-subtle ploy to get your arm back?"

"I _am_ rather fond of it..."

"Five more minutes," Richard said. He was still snoring on his stomach when Graham woke up at seven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is taking so long. Thanks to the lovely beta, and thanks to Esthree for the kind and inspiring words over e-mail.


	9. Chapter 9

"'Sons of Folly: A Glance'," Lee read aloud. After five seconds of silence, Graham feared protestations were incoming, but his colleague merely nodded and said, "It fits. I like it."

"One less thing to worry about." He rubbed his face with his hand, eyes drifting past the open lobby doors, where their listless cast waited. "Shall we, or...?"

"Right behind you."

They didn't lose anyone on Monday morning, but it was close. Graham (rather optimistically) suspected that Luke's momentary lapse in dedication was due more to what happened with Evangeline than the additional work required. Without divulging how he managed it, Lee got the young actress to smooth things over prior to Graham's arrival, and it did wonders for Luke's mood. 

Despite predictions, John Callen had needed no coercion to take on one more role, his enthusiasm punctuated with an anecdote about his own little acting challenges back in the mid-80s (supposedly - the volume of knowledge the man wished to share was indirectly proportional to the speed with which he shared it, and Graham was sure his attention would have wandered even if he didn't have a thousand other things to do).

No, the one other hitch Graham had been expecting came from a different source entirely.

"No! This is too much!" Adam cried, eyes wide with incredulity and panic, the script he was given slammed on the chair between them. The outburst caught Graham completely unaware. "I've _just_ pinned the dialogue you kept changing your mind about two weeks ago, and now you want me to play one more character?!"

Graham winced as he picked up the battered script. "Two. We're lacking women, and you have the most convincing build -"

" _No!_ "

"Aveline hardly has any lines! Adam...come now, we've been through worse in the Jackson. This can't possibly compare to stepping in for Mercutio _cold_ that night Rehan and his understudy were pissed -"

"That was Shakespeare! I've been fed Shakespeare since I was six! Not a bloody three-hour-long original play from a crazy writer more indecisive than the weather!"

"Arguably also Shakespeare." Adam didn't seem to find that very funny. Graham sighed. "It's two minutes of additional dialogue _at the most_. For _both_ characters. Really nothing you can't handle."

The slight appeal to his ego seemed to be gaining traction. After a minute of petty glaring, Adam received the script once again. "I suppose one more week is enough time. _Bastard._ At least I don't have to worry about Matheson anymore."

"Hrm, yes...Matheson..." 

Something in Graham's expression brought back the alarmed look on Adam's face and had him swiftly scanning the script. Within a moment, he fixated on a particular section, his eyes darting back and forth on the new lines near the bottom. He didn't seem too perturbed...until he turned to the next page. And the page after that. "...What's this?" he asked, sounding small and frightened of the answer. 

"Your script, I believe."

"This is a three minute speech," Adam squeaked.

"What a filthy lie. It's two minutes, thirty seconds tops."

"This part was fine! It was _fine_ , and we all liked it, and...and I can't believe you'd..."

Graham judged this might be a good time to tell Adam why those lines were added recently. While the actor didn't look happy, catching a glimpse of sleep-deprived Richard through the open doors leeched some of the sulk from his face. His agreement came with the caveat that if Graham changed or added one more line before the Glance, balls would be crushed.

No one was particularly thrilled with the news, of course, and even Evangeline lost her usual coffee-infused morning cheer. But faced with the threat of binning the whole production, Graham discovered that, despite the lack of monetary incentives, he had on his hands a group of skilled, dedicated, and _loyal_ actors.

"We're here for the long haul, in case you haven't figured it out," Luke told him, while he was trying to stomp on the sudden rush of sentiment he hadn't been prepared for.

"Yeah, Chief. We want to see this thing in lights," Evangeline helpfully chimed in.

Pair of wankers. They were easier to handle when they weren't speaking to each other. He hurriedly shooed them off - a minute more of this, and he'd be embarrassing himself. "Off with you two - tell everyone we're starting the line reading in five, and the new blocking arrangements after. Maybe a stage rehearsal from start to finish if we can squeeze that in." Not likely, but one could hope. They couldn't keep the actors too late today because they needed to learn their lines, but they also only had today and tomorrow to themselves before their first dress on Wednesday.

Dean caught him while he was preparing the conference room. "You're handling press this week, right?"

"Starting today, actually," Graham said, while placing script copies beside actors' name tags. "I'll have to leave you lot with Lee at noon when the reporters arrive."

A few sheets of paper were shoved into his line of sight. He threw Dean a suspicious glance. "Few things you need to make sure get out," Dean clarified. He commenced babbling something about the rewards for backers on the lower section of the page, but Graham couldn't quite stop staring at the top of the printout. 

"Dean..." he began, but the younger man was talking too fast to notice. "Dean, shut up a moment. Tell me this isn't our crowdfunding page."

The actor ceased his ranting. He tilted his head at the page, as if searching for what Graham was staring at so seriously. "Well...yeah, it is. Looks better than most, got a few friends to do the design. Lots of comments on the vid updates." 

"Did you seriously think that -" Graham interrupted himself and closed his eyes for a moment. A prayer for patience after, he said, slowly, "Dean. It's 'Glance', with a C. And an E."

"Oh." The blank look on Dean's face quickly gave way to realisation. " _Oh!_ Yeah, that makes more sense."

"Change it. Now. Please. How long has that been - no, wait, don't tell me."

"Not gonna tell you 'cause you're in a bad mood. Look here instead..." He pointed at the upper-right of the page, where a bright red "£585" was dominating the sidebar. "That's after only five days."

"That's far from enough," Graham said, frowning.

"But you've got people supporting you before you've even released anything. This is good!"

"If you say so," he muttered. It didn't _seem_ good. And it hardly seemed any cause for celebration. Luck willing, that figure would get a few more zeros by the end of the week.

"Trust me on this, I've seen a _lot_ of projects go down on this site. Oh and," he took out a pen from his pocket and opened his notepad to a clear page, "just need to run a few things by you - since we offered dress rehearsal tickets as rewards to backers, we're fully booked on Wednesday."

Graham stared. " _How_? We were only offering that to 100-pound supporters, don't tell me -"

Dean's face held equal parts worry and guilt. "About that...I ma-y have lowered it a bit."

He peered suspiciously at the fidgeting actor. "...Into what?"

"30 pounds...?" Dean continued before Graham could start yelling. "We were only getting a handful of 100 backers at the time, and I thought -"

"You...a handful would have been perfect." Graham drew in a deep breath. "Dean, mate, we're drowning here. The company's confidence is in tatters; I'm trying to keep any sort of bad press to a minimum. A full house means stressed actors, short-tempered crew, things breaking, and that's not even the best part. Audiences have _twitter accounts_ , _blogs_ , _facebooks_ -"

"All right, all right. I get it. Sorry."

"Not that I don't appreciate what you've been doing." A bit of good humour crept back into Dean's expression. "What's done is done. Just clear this sort of stuff with me first." 

"If it's any consolation, I think most of the backers attending are from Aidan's side of the pond."

"Oh. Great." Because Graham liked nothing more than dealing with an audience comprised of energy-filled twenty-somethings more familiar with rock concerts than a theatrical production. He swallowed his annoyance and merely said, "Just make sure they know not to bring cameras."

"Will do."

The line reading went relatively well, the blocking rearrangement not so much, and in the middle of that confused tangle of ill-timed costume changes and scene exits, Graham had to excuse himself to do his first press meeting for the week. Lee's miserable farewell tugged at his heartstrings, but there was no avoiding the abandonment. All the reporters who had scheduled (and had been forced to reschedule) for Monday had already agreed to a round table style of interview, and being late to that might actually be the one thing to push their patience beyond any hope of a good write-up. 

It didn't quite help his spirits when the first thing he was told when he sat down in front of twenty reporters was, "So when are we going to the _real_ press room, because this is cramped as hell."

Thankfully, the next hour was free of mockery, as the group was content enough to listen while he rambled on about the basics of the play. The liberal serving of embarrassing anecdotes helped lighten the tone, and Graham had plenty of those to share. Some of the faces were familiar, people who always dropped by at the Walsh whenever Hugo was staging something; some, he hadn't seen since his days at the Jackson. Writers who often never bothered with small theatres.

A reporter for The Independent (if Graham recalled correctly from the mess of introductions) asked, "And what is your reaction to Ian McKellen's statement regarding your play?"

"'Statement'...?" Graham prompted. At her nod, he said, wryly, "You're going to have to help me out here, lass."

There was some shuffling and rifling after the journalist muttered "Does anyone have today's paper...?" Eventually, an older gentleman at the far right produced a copy and handed it to Graham.

_Of course_ , Graham thought, with an internal sigh. _How could I forget?_ She had meant McCoy's performing arts column. As promised, Monday's article featured a gleeful rundown of what had transpired when Christopher Lee first attempted a pre-Boyens preview, and why no other director had tried the same since. Below that was a brief quote from his illustrious competitor:

_"Every year, we get these directors who think they can utilise some publicity gimmick just to fill the seats, don't we? But it's sad to see such a crude attempt from a Boyens hopeful. Although I suppose one learns to expect such commonplace practices to come from a product of the Jackson Theatre. I think the earlier Mr. McTavish realizes he abandoned his true calling when he entered the Walsh, the better it is for theatre culture in general."_

"Sounds more like mud being slung than a statement to me." When the smattering of laughter died, he said, "Well, Sir McKellen is, of course, welcome to his opinion, esteemed musical director that he is, and I will be more than happy to see him eat his own words at the Boyens by the end of the year."

The laughter was louder this time. He leaned back in his seat, pleased that he hadn't given into temptation and released a few caustic words. Such pettiness could only backfire on his play. He wondered, not for the first time, if McKellen still remembered teaching him that one directorial course in LAMDA back in the 80's. 

It was in that brief lull in questions that he spotted a tall, familiar figure through the glass walls of the conference room, walking down the corridor with an unopened bottle of water in hand.

"Richard!" he loudly called, to the surprise of the reporters. Everyone turned in their seats to stare at the wide-eyed actor. "Come here a moment. Taking five?"

"Yes...you probably don't want to know why." Which meant, Graham's imagination supplied, that either something broke and Tami was sobbing in a corner, or someone was having a nervous breakdown on stage. "Did you want me to join you...?"

"Yes, here, now, if you please." He pulled up a seat beside him. "Ladies and gents, let me introduce Richard Armitage, the show's protagonist - my Westmore - and a damn fine actor."

A few voices spoke at once, though the group appeared only mildly interested. He laughed and held up his hand. "I can't tell you the circumstances in which I found him, because that may get someone fired," Graham began, which immediately had a few pairs of eyes shining with curiosity, "And I absolutely will not say that that someone is Mark Hadlow. But I _will_ say that this man, on stage, made all the other actors look like they were phoning it in."

"Stole another one from the Jackson, then?" a young woman asked, wearing an amused smile at Graham's half-shrug. "How'd you manage to convince him to work for you without pay?" 

"I quite literally hounded him for days until he said yes. Like a bad boyfriend." With some dramatic flair, he frowned and turned to face Richard, who was looking ill at ease. "Wait, why _did_ you agree to work for me without pay?"

"Well..." the actor began, sporting body language that was an odd mix of embarrassed and entertained. His eyes barely met Graham's before they fixed on a spot on the table. The nail-fiddling returned with a vengeance. "You wrote a cracking good scene and showed it to me. I think I fell in love right there, really." 

In that three-second beat where Graham's breath froze in his lungs, Richard added, "With the script."

"Ah...yes. The script." He couldn't even tell if Richard had been kidding or not, his expression was suddenly a mask of polite neutrality. Aware of the many people watching them, he cleared his throat and playfully said to their audience, "It's how I got my co-director to work for me as well, so I must have done something right."

"So, when did the two of you..."

And on it went. Apart from the initial discomfiture, Richard settled into a calm state of sorts where he would keep quiet and look at the table, meek as you please, until a query was directly addressed to him. Graham derived some amusement from noting that the reporters, at one point, began lobbing the same questions they'd asked Graham at the actor whenever they wanted a more serious reply. 

In hindsight, it wasn't entirely unforeseen that this could be Richard's first serious press interview, and on the tail end of that thought came a bit of worry for the younger man. Graham remained observant, but, as the interview came to a close ten minutes later, he found he needn't have worried - Richard handled himself well, though all of his answers tended to be on the graver side of things.

"Let's get you back to Lee," Graham said, urging Richard on with a hand on his back. During the interview, he'd dismissed one of Lee's tech lackeys with a firm shake of his head - the young man had been gesturing for Richard to rejoin the cast. 

"Not staying?" Richard asked.

"Can't for long. Second batch of reporters coming in at three. You did good, by the way." Richard's reply to that was a wry half-smile. "Lee's going to tell you this later, but you may as well know now - you, Aidan, Evangeline, and I: photoshoot tomorrow morning. Nothing fancy. Three or four hours, then it's back to the theatre for rehearsal. Gives Lee some time to go over tech." 

"Together?" Richard asked. In the distance, they could hear Aidan shouting his lines in Act 2, Scene 4.

"One after the other. In-house studio, so we won't have to go far. It's just for some assets to composite for the programme and posters."

 

They ended up taking group shots anyway, because the photographer friend Lee brought in had very specific ideas for the programme. The shoot was an unexpected moment of relaxation for him - and for the cast as well, it seemed, if Aidan and Evangeline's copious laughter was any indication. The shoot was held in two parts, one in costume, which came first, and the second, in casual clothes. Her disappointment in not being allowed to get shots of the theatre and Graham's office because of time constraints was superseded by how ridiculously photogenic all of them were. 

When it was Richard's turn, Evangeline, with relentless devotion he could only admire from a distance, kept trying to get him to laugh from behind the camera. To Graham's eternal amusement she kept succeeding, leaving him with the absurd view of the borderline-heartbroken exterior of Westmore repeatedly devolving into fits of uncontrolled giggling in-between flashes.

"Sorry about all this," he muttered under his breath, while Richard threatened Evangeline (who was now hiding behind Aidan) with rearranging her closet without her consent if she didn't stop soon. A threat Evangeline seemed to take seriously judging from her indignation. "I've been putting them through the ringer all month, bit of insanity's bound to come out eventually."

"Eh, young people," she said with a dismissive wave. Graham thought it best to keep Richard's actual age to himself. "Just a few more, then let's start with the casual shots."

When it came time for his shoot, Graham felt a bit of deja vu, stepping in front of the studio lights. The last time he'd done a serious shoot was at the Jackson, and back then, he'd been younger, fitter, and smoother. After the first high-pitched flash, he was keenly aware that softer flesh now resided in areas where once there was hard muscle...an odd sensation, considering he'd never been the type to be _too_ self-conscious.

Then again, he'd also never stress-eaten without skipping meals before, something he'd been doing the past two months. On the more positive side, none of Evangeline's and Aidan's antics were working on him, although his shots may have ended up looking more smug because of it. 

During the casual group shots, there was a setup they were asked to do that he found rather odd, with him seated behind an officious-looking desk, and Richard half-seated on the edge. Something about the arrangement made him want to steeple his fingers in a James-Bond-villain-ish sort of way. He mentioned the stray urge to Richard when the photographer took a minute to adjust one of the studio lights, which got the man laughing and throwing movie quotes at him in mock-German accents.

"Dorks," Aidan observed, while taking selfies with them as the background on his phone.


	10. Chapter 10

Of the five total rehearsals they attempted since the photoshoot, they only managed to get through the full fifty-five minutes twice. There was time for one more, but Graham felt they should end on a positive note - it was the first out of three nights of previews, after all. 

It didn't help nerves any when young people sporting an unwashed countenance dressed in jackets and torn skinny jeans began filling the theatre rather early. 

"Who are these hobos?" John remarked from beside him. They both watched a seventh person greet Aidan with a loud "'Ey!" and an enthusiastic hug.

"They do have a certain homeless quality to them, don't they?" Graham muttered. Somewhere to their right, something made of clay shattered on the floor, accompanied by laughter and a sheepish "Oops!" He went over to where one of Tami's statue props had split into two and groaned. " _Away_ from this area, if you please!" he yelled, shooing the young stragglers. "There's a reason this lane is cordoned off! Somebody wheel these props backstage."

A flash went off somewhere, its brilliance blinding him for a moment. He frantically waved his hand in the direction of the young woman carrying the offending device. "No, no, no! No cameras - how did you even - Dean, will you talk to these...these..."

Dean's raised eyebrows implied a caution in wording. "Backers?"

"You sure? They look like they can't even afford a ride back home."

"Pretty sure," Dean said with a barely-repressed grin. "Pretty sure they can hear you, too."

Graham pointedly ignored all the glares he was getting. "Look, can you tell Ryan to handle this...? God, thank you. _No_ cameras. Cell phones _off_. Anyone who tries to sneak another shot gets escorted out."

He spared a brief guilty thought for Ryan, who already had his hands full at the front trying to explain the house rules to the new arrivals. Backstage wasn't any better, he discovered. People appeared to be in a panic; costumes being transported across hallways, Lee's tech lackeys running around with cables, actors rehearsing their lines outside of their dressing rooms...the collective nervous energy permeated the very walls. 

It was fifteen minutes until the curtain went up, but he couldn't let everyone go in this frenzy. He called for a meeting in the cast conference room and said a few quick words, drawing from past speeches he'd made to calm nervous actors. Of the groups assembled, only Lee's people appeared to have it together. _Good man_ , he thought, and prayed it would last throughout the performance.

Among the actors, John and Aidan seemed isolated in their eagerness for things to get started. Even Dean displayed some unease. "Taking care of the Kickstarter's more fun than learning lines," he said. Not really something Graham wanted to hear as a director, but he took comfort in the fact that Dean had never missed a single rehearsal, and he'd seen the young man nail every line. Still, he predicted a dropped line or two. If they were lucky.

He'd stopped by Richard's dressing room before heading to the control booth, and found the actor a little tense, but otherwise even-tempered. About ready to retch, maybe, if the vomit bucket waiting in the corner was any indication. 

Graham took an empty seat, watching Richard turn to face him but not quite meeting his eyes, saw that the nails of his right hand were picked to stubs so close to the skin that he feared they might bleed soon. 

"It's just previews," he said, his tone placating.

Richard nodded.

"Just another rehearsal."

Richard nodded.

"Any mistakes, we patch them up tomorrow."

Richard nodded, and released a shaky breath. "First day jitters. I'm fine."

Lee's voice crackled through the speakers, asking for Graham to take the stage and for the beginning actors to take their places. One last reassuring squeeze on Richard's shoulder, and he was off, walking down the hallway and heading for the wings - past actors, past electrics crew, and into the bright lights of the Walsh theatre, standing in front of a microphone and addressing an audience that was just now falling silent.

Spoken aloud, the introductory speech he'd prepared felt a little too long for his liking - he'd have to see about paring that down tomorrow. It was a brief history of what they'd gone through as a company and why the actors were performing more than one role - nothing about Act I or the play itself. The segment they'd chosen for the Glance held just enough detail to tease and fire up the imagination out of context, while containing both a climax and a cliffhanger, big chunks of the exciting parts presented to the public as a gamble to stay alive. There was a bit of arrogance in presenting it with no introduction, something the critics were bound to notice and hopefully write about in a positive light come opening.

That was still on Saturday. For now...they only needed to get through tonight. 

Fifty-five minutes. Like a morning jog.

Once the applause died and the lights dimmed, he headed down the middle aisle, out the side doors, up a flight of stairs, and into the control booth already housing Lee and an assistant.

He shared a long, hopeful look with his stage manager. Curtains up. With a swift intake of breath, Lee activated his headset and said, "LX one, two, and three: go."

 

7 a.m. on a Thursday morning in the Walsh, and the only person with any sort of good cheer in the theatre was Graham himself. 

Despondent cast and crew members lay scattered like stray pups wet from the rain. Most looked like they hadn't slept - perhaps one or two hadn't even bothered going home. So last night hadn't gone well. Big deal. It had played out better than Graham had been expecting, and he felt that was cause enough for levity.

"Everyone here?" he asked. 

A few heads nodded. Most uttered half-hearted grunts and continued staring off into space. 

"No, wait, hold on... " he said, pretending to fish something out of his tenner jacket. "What's this, in my pocket...? Oh, look! It's all the lines you dropped."

The assembled cast groaned. "That's not funny," Luke whinged. "You're not funny."

"Oh, come now." Graham chuckled. "Sure, John tripped over that blasted wire that wasn't supposed to be there in the first place...and Adam forgot half of his new lines...and Evangeline broke a set piece and _almost_ her head when she walked right into it...and Aidan couldn't dredge up any part of the script during the last quarter..."

"None of this is making us feel any better," Dean interrupted, plaintive. "Did you even see the comments people left on our crowdfunding page?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Believe me when I say mass confusion is a much more preferred outcome than blatantly bad reviews." The feedback had even been kinder than he'd been expecting, but then people seemed more fixated on the mistakes than the actual content of the play. Someone had _still_ managed to sneak in a camera, but all that person did was upload a clip of John Callen falling flat on his face, played on loop and set to the Backstreet Boys's "Get Down" song. 

One of his heart stoppers had been the thorny Scene 3. When Adam had started dropping lines like a flower girl at a wedding, fear had taken a strong hold on his gut, nearly paralyzing in its intensity. But Adam had pulled through, the additional lines for Matheson meant to calm Richard delivered smoothly and with no hesitation. 

He'd breathed a loud sigh of relief during the scene change. Lee clapped him on the shoulder - all he could manage before he was once again preoccupied with timing cues.

Richard's own performance had been hampered by the mistakes occurring around him - a glitch in Luke's memory cutting out four pages of the script, including one of Richard's more memorable speeches, for example. Two-thirds in, he had seemed to be running on auto-pilot; uttering the lines as he had hundreds of times, but nervously braced for something else to happen on stage that would require him to shift gear, adapt, and possibly improvise. It had been an infectious sort of nervousness he exuded, something that many of the audience, judging from the comments, mistook as intentional.

So no, not a _complete_ failure. If they used their time wisely, Graham could easily see this turning into something great.

"The important thing is we all got through it," he announced to his heartbroken cast. "Not unscathed, and maybe all the worse for wear, but that's what we're here for. _Be not afeard_ , my lords and ladies - there's still time to fix things. Now, come," he clapped and gestured for everyone to stand, ignoring the absolutely slow way people started rising. "On your feet, from the top - Adam, are you kidding me with that? _Off script_. You know the lines, let's shake that uncertainty out today. Act 2, Scene 1, Lee, if you please..."

He vacated the stage and took his customary seat beside his co-director. Lee cleared his throat. "Act 2, Scene 1: enter Rippler, Bishop, Brienne, and Aveline..."

 

The Glance was turning into a hole-ridden skimmer with only a pair of hands to stopper two leaks at a time. Thursday night's preview went better, but it was a short-sighted victory - Friday held a repeat of some of Wednesday's mistakes plus a set of new ones. Even Lee's tech crew was starting to make basic errors, causing the normally easygoing man to lose it, berating the responsible personnel in public and with a raised voice. Graham had had to intervene, telling Lee to cool off and sending the poor lighting technicians home with a few consoling words.

Some of the feedback had been harsh. A few people had posted spoiler-filled accounts on various online theatre forums. Too much of both were beating his spirit, so Graham told Dean to keep away from the crowdfunding comments for now, and to dissuade anyone else from checking if the opportunity arose.

He couldn't quite shake the feeling that everything that was going wrong could have been avoided in the hands of another director. Of a _better_ director. This was fifty-five minutes - one third of the length of the plays he was used to handling. What was he doing wrong?

Nine-thirty p.m., Friday night. Whatever it was, he'd run out of time to figure it out. 

"Right," he exhaled, scratching his beard and looking over his exhausted cast. "Get some sleep. No rehearsal tomorrow morning." 

Loud protests erupted - he held up a hand until they quieted down. 

"I want you all to _rest_. Some of you will find this difficult, but please, give it an honest effort. I think the pressure's got into our heads, and we all need to just take a step back, breathe, and remember that we, all of us here, know this play by heart now. If you're still nervous come afternoon - that's all right. That's normal. _Use it_. Draw strength from the fact that for centuries, veterans and newcomers alike have shared that exact same feeling and emerged as icons in this field."

"We open for _one performance_ ," Evangeline said, looking more worried than he'd ever seen her before, "We have to rehearse!"

"Yes, it's one performance." Graham allowed a gentle smile to curve his lips. "Perhaps the only one this play will ever see. And yes, we could have benefited from more time to practise it before tomorrow, but we don't have that luxury. I would rather have you all clear-headed and at the top of your game than crawling on your bellies, too worried to remember whether you exit stage right or left during Scene 6. Left, by the way, Aidan."

Aidan laughed along with the rest, cheeks flushed. "Tosser!" 

"So, please - go home. Sleep, or whatever it is you do to relax. Eat well, say a prayer if you're religious, no worries if you're not, and come at 4 p.m. tomorrow. Bring formalwear - we'll have a small opening ceremony for our esteemed guests. Nothing too fancy 'cause we can't afford it, so don't worry. Just something to make the high and mighty feel like they're special."

When he mentioned formalwear, he could hear Richard's soft "Oh...shit" from the far right. He kept it in mind as people began gathering their things and filing out. A long, weary sigh left his lips, his own soft bed calling out to him a drive away. He was perhaps too wired to be able to sleep properly, but anything to ease the tight muscles in his arms and back would be such a relief - sad reminders that he was getting on in years.

He picked up his own stuff (glasses, Lee's show report for the night, and the final seating plan) and climbed down the apron. Richard and Evangeline were still speaking in hushed tones in a shadowed corner.

In closer proximity, he heard Evangeline say, "You should tell him. Don't make a big thing out of it."

" _Stop it,_ " Richard hissed. From this distance, Graham could see his shoulders stiffened with repressed tension. "He has enough to worry about. There's this place I can -"

"In the middle of the night?"

"It's nine p.m.! And even if it is, I could try tomorrow -"

" _Saturday_. What if it's closed? You're so fucking stubborn."

Neither had noticed him even though he was standing a mere foot away. The two jumped when Graham loudly cleared his throat. "Something wrong?" he asked. 

Richard hurriedly said "No" at the same time Evangeline said, "Richard doesn't have a suit."

His eyebrows rose. "Oh." He fixed his gaze on Richard who was busy rubbing the back of his neck, throwing a glare at Evangeline while trying not to look embarrassed. "Is it something you're morally against, or...?"

Richard was red in the face now. "I lent the one good suit I had to someone I don't talk to anymore."

"Brother...?"

"Ex."

"Ah." Bad breakup, then. He stepped back and surveyed Richard with an assessing eye. Assuming it hadn't been eaten by moths yet, he might actually have something that would fit. 

"Are you adverse to borrowing one?" he first asked. When Richard said no, he nodded and said, "Come with me."

"I'll keep the flat unlocked," Evangeline said with a wave of farewell. He took the exit that led to the side parking lot and escorted Richard to his car.

 

"Are you sure it's all right...?" Richard asked. For what felt like the hundredth time. Graham gave him a hard look until the man slumped in his chair and silently rubbed his leg. 

_It's here somewhere..._ He hadn't rummaged through his closet this thoroughly in years, evidenced by the embarrassing amount of dust now swirling around the room. He could have sworn it was among the clothes hangers. Annoyed, he grabbed most of his hung pants and jackets in a bear hug, dumped them on his bed, and resumed his search, this time unimpeded and farther in the back.

"Honestly, this is... I could just nip into a rental..."

Graham paused from his search, hands coated in dust, the ache in his back throbbing from his bent over position. He heaved a great sigh. "Richard." 

"Sorry."

"I'm tired. You're tired."

"I know. Sorry."

"And my temper's already hanging by a _very_ thin thread, so, please..."

"Graham...I _said_ I'm sorry." 

"Well maybe you should fucking stop saying it."

The other man fell silent. 

_Shit._ Regret, strong and so very late, followed his words. He straightened and rubbed his face, unmindful of the dirt. "Christ. Look..."

"You know," Richard interrupted, sardonic, his eyes glued to the floor and a thumb worrying his lower lip, "if you'd only let me take care of my own clothes, you wouldn't be mad right now, and I wouldn't be feeling like the most useless person in the world for not having a suit."

" _I apologise_ ," Graham said with abject sincerity. Blue eyes trained on the floor glanced up. "I didn't mean to snap. It's...well. Has anyone ever told you you're really bad at accepting help?"

"...I think someone just did."

Graham huffed out a laugh. He smirked at Richard's narrowed eyes and moved out of his view, resuming his search in the closet. 

"Are you actually saying this is my fault?"

"I'm _saying_ ," Graham replied, willing his temper not to flare again, "that I genuinely want to help you, but you keep treating my offer like it's some sort of contagion. And I don't mean the play, or anything related to it, because that's work, isn't it? And somehow, that's different."

"It is." 

Graham waited, but Richard never continued. "That's it, then. That's all the answer I'm getting."

When silence was his only response, Graham rolled his eyes and resumed shoving objects out of the way. His fraying patience could use a break, and pushing longer responses out of Richard was too taxing an activity for an already long night. Old bed sheets, kerchiefs, and...a blond wig? The last item received a confused look before it, too, was chucked to the side. The sheets were from three years ago though, and he spotted a familiar set of headphones he'd received at the Jackson. He must be getting close.

After he tossed a pair of ratty old combat boots, he heard Richard cautiously say, "I'd rather not owe people more than I can pay back."

"This industry isn't exactly the Hunger Games," Graham replied with a soft snort.

"Felt like it sometimes, before I came to the Jackson. Even there, in some respect." He paused, and Graham could imagine his expression - long lashes halfway lowered, eyes focused on a memory far away. "People can be vicious."

He grunted his agreement. "People can be. Yes." Something wrapped in plastic crumpled under his right hand. Recognising the cuff, he pulled it out, straightening once again from the closet and unfolding the two dusty articles of clothing.

This was the first piece of formalwear he'd allowed himself to splurge on during his Jackson days, very soon after his first fat pay check. All high quality Italian wool and AMF stitching, single breasted with a two-button fastening and narrow notched lapels. He'd only worn it once due to discomfort around the waist - too narrow, he suspected - and got a little sentimental when he should have sent it back for adjustments. 

Gesturing for Richard to stand, he handed him the trousers and held the jacket up against his chest. Looked to be a fair fit. "Change into it," he said, removing the wrap from the clothing and handing them to the younger man.

Minutes later, Richard emerged from his bedroom, wearing the suit like it was bespoke for him instead. On closer inspection, the sleeves might be a bit too long - the cuff fell past his wrists, but not so far as to be worthy of comment. 

"How does it feel?" he asked, while properly setting the half-buttoned fastening and smoothing the black lapels above Richard's white shirt.

"Expensive," was the simple reply. He looked afraid to walk in the thing. 

"Richard."

"It feels good. Smooth. Imagine how incredibly upset I'll be if something bad happens to it."

Graham gave a short laugh. "You'll be wearing it for thirty minutes. This comes with a tie, by the way." His hands followed the flattened edges of the notched lapel upwards, over the curve of Richard's clavicles, sloping around his neck. The tips of the younger man's hair tickled his thumbs. "Crisp shirt?"

"Have one," Richard replied, voice soft and nearly a whisper. His breath ghosted over Graham's beard, tickling his chin, warming him. "And shoes."

"Hm." He gave the suit one last smoothing near the sternum, pulling flat a crease. "I guess you're ready."

He'd been about to step back, assurances that he could have the suit cleaned and ready in time at the tip of his tongue, but when he looked up and saw bright, blue eyes looking at him with such warmth, such naked admiration, his feet remained frozen in place. An impulse threaded its way through, lifting his hand, brushing his thumb across a cool cheek before he could think better of it. Those expressive blue eyes closed, and he had to smooth his thumb across that cheek again, his fingertip tingling when it passed through the fringe of thick, dark lashes. 

There were so many reasons not to kiss him _now_ , of all times, but Graham didn't want to listen to a single one, didn't want to stop his other hand from grasping a strong waist and drawing closer. Richard's palms rested on his chest, and surely, _surely_ he could feel how hard Graham's heart was beating right now. 

He lowered his head to capture those thin, soft-looking lips, but stopped and froze when Richard averted his head.

Something clenched his heart, made it hard to breathe. He drew back, but Richard had grasped his hand, the one still cradling his jaw, and pressed a long kiss on his palm. 

Mere seconds, and he was released. The questions Graham couldn't bring himself to ask must be all over his face, but Richard's gaze remained fixed to the side, at the floor, anywhere but at him. "I'll change. I have to go," Richard said in a rush, and vanished back into the bedroom.

In the sudden quiet, Graham released a frustrated sigh. His forehead met the wall, the sharp pain doing nothing to dull the turmoil he didn't know how to handle. _"Shit."_

Richard took longer than he should have, changing in his bedroom. By the time he emerged, Graham was waiting outside the door at a respectful distance, carrying a can of beer and offering him another. "For the road," Graham simply said, when surprised eyes met his. 

Richard swallowed nervously and took it with a nod. "Thank you...for the suit," he said. 

Graham opened his second can several minutes after his front door closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if the next chapter is a little late. Thank you so much for the lovely comments!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for those who have been leaving such wonderful and encouraging feedback on my other fics, and I humbly apologize for the lack of updates on my WIPs and the lack of replies. RL has been difficult, and this monster of a fic has been consuming my free time for the past couple of months. I have half of it written down, but it still needs a lot of rereading/editing, so I'll be posting parts of it hopefully once a week so my proofreader (who is also busy) doesn't go insane.
> 
> A few other notes (possibly more later):
> 
> * While I applied a sort of hierarchy to the theatres Walsh, Boyens, and Jackson, it in no way represents how I feel about the wonderful people who have these names IRL. 
> 
> * I added a Directing course in LAMDA before it even existed.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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